The single prerequeset required for employment at any respectable gaming magazine is a mental disability.

Here you'll find some classic examples proving this unfortunately little-known fact.

Anyone who's actually played Loom knows what a dog of a game it is. Instead of taking the time to properly port over the 256-color version of the PC game (however, I'm not sure how nice the non-bg art in the original could've been), they instead slapped the 16-color version onto a Duo CD, with only the ocassional touch up.

The limited ammount of CD music consists of butchered synth renditions of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

And they didn't even try to get a decent PSG sound or use samples for the music weaving, instead it's literally as bad as it can possibly sound on a Turbografx-16/PC Engine system(not completely garbage, but it sure ain't gorgeous).

You can listen to some of the rich music that you weave while playing this gorgeous game right here.

The first 5 sceenshots below are somewhat misleading. They were captured through an emulator. When the game is played on real TG-16/PCE hardware with regular composite video display, it just turns into a complete ugly mess. Just as resourceful programmers went crazy with dithering in later Genesis games to use the hardware's display as a means to blend everything together... somehow Loom takes the actual limited graphics and uses the hardware to exponentially destroy the image.

Checkout the last screenshot to see what "Pro Reviewer" "Andromeda" would've been looking at.

Now a (perhaps) interesting side-note. As ironic as it is that a few pages before one Pro Reviewer slams the music in Air Zonk, another Pro Reviewer lauds the music and overall aesthetics of Loom... it's made all the more eerie by my True-Life Turbografx Confessional Story.

After years of enjoying quality North American and Japanese CD-ROM2 games, I was desperate for more Super CD titles after they finally launched the format on this continent. And since I love questy RPG's so much, I decided to give Loom a shot. After-all, it was a powerful Super CD game right? So as much as I was eager to play Air Zonk, after some lengthy decision making I finally decided to buy Loom instead. Boy was that a mistake.

I wasn't familiar with the original Swan Lake pieces, so the music sounded really great to me. The one good thing that I will always be able to say about Loom, is that it introduced me to Tchaikovsky. Right away I could see that TTI had tried to trick me and every other Turbo Fan who'd supported them all along with that single deceptive screenshot that they'd been peddling for this game for so long.

But hey, a great game can overcome audio and visual deficiencies with outstanding gameplay right? Well, unfortunately, the game is so buggy that graphics sometimes load garbled, audio can turn into nasty static, sounding like track 2 of most Duo games in a regular CD player, it just plain crashed every once in awhile... and a good number of Saves either didn't take or later mysteriously disappeared.

And after playing through the game on every difficulty several times, as I did all Turbo games back in the day, I was left with a bad feeling about the whole experience. So I did what I had to. I went back to Radio Shack and asked if I could exchange it as defective and take Air Zonk instead. Needless to say, this allowed me to appreciate Air Zonk all the more. As soon as I turned it on, I was blown away by the amazing music...

"The graphics are strikingly colorful and detailed, especially by PC Engine standards."

"While the audio's not without some distorted PC Engine twings and twangs, overall the sounds are surprisingly clear and accurate."

"SF II CE is a resounding blow to critics of the PC Engine's technical capabilities."

Okay, that first quote refers to how the PC Engine's graphics suck. The second quote again straight up explains how the PC Engine's sound sucks. Now that third quote... By "critics of the PC Engine's technical capabilities", Pro Reviewer "Slasher Quan" must be refering to himself and/or GamePro magazine right?

Although that much alone is enough to warrant spot in the prestigious Blue Shadows hall of fame, let me further point out that colorful graphics are what the PC Engine has always been known for. The Genesis is known for independant background scrolling, particularly ridiculous ammounts of parallax, FM music and speed (they actually designed a mascot around that last point). The Super Nintendo is known for transparencies, Scaling & Rotation and it's unique sounding (some would say "the best") sound chip.

Although for the most part, the PC Engine is universally known more for its content than any particular technical specialty (before neo-console-wars-fanboyism spawned on the internet, it was considered common knowledge that the PC Engine was adept at throwing around tons of sprites of all sizes as well as just plain doing a lot at once), the one exception is colorful graphics. Even Turbo-haters still give it at least that much. By 1993 there had been enough quality PC Engine titles (also featuring quality sound samples) released on both HuCard and CD that anyone familiar enough with the system to judge it would know this.

"I admit it. Konami is the king of Castlevania games"

This one's pretty self-explanitory, but since it's so unbelievable, you can see the article for yourself right here.

"This is the wave of the future!"

-first line of the review of Sherlock Holmes 1 by Steve Harris: Publisher, Editor-In-Chief EGM

"I really hate these types of games - they bore me to tears, and once you finish them, there is hardly any reason to play them again!"

-first line of the review of Sherlock Holmes 2 by Steve Harris: Publisher, Editor-In-Chief EGM

Again, another straight-forward example and this kind of professional journalism which is the very reason Blue Shadows was created.

If you read the rest of the original Shelock Holmes reviews, you can see how they rant and rave about fmv being the only way to go, or "the wave of the future!" or "the type of games we'll be playing two years from now. It is revolutionary, challenging and years ahead of its time."

"Whomp 'em is an(sic) interesting game. I liked the American Indian idea, especially since most action games don't get creative to try new themes."

-Sushi-X, Assistant Editor EGM

Yes, Whomp 'em is exactly what it sounds like. You can check out the entire review right here. Make sure to read the entire game description at the top , all the way through to "How!"

"Midnight Resistance is awesome!!!"

-first line of the review by Sushi-X, Assistant Editor EGM

"NHL Hockey is awesome!"

-first line of the review by Sushi-X, Assistant Editor EGM

Surprisingly, Sushi-X gave both games an 8, even though Midnight Resistance got 2 more exclamation marks after its "awesome". Both reviews just happened to appear next to each other (due to the alphabetical listing) in EGM's annual Buyer's Guide.

"This has got to be the best Sega CD game I have ever played."

"Overall this is the best Sega CD game you can probably consider."

-Ed Semrad, Associate Publisher EGM

By this point in the Sega-CD's lifespan, the following games had already been released: Dark Wizard, Ecco The Dolphin CD, Chuck Rock, Chuck Rock II, Dune, Final Fight CD, Hook, Keio Flying Squadron, LUNAR: The Silver Star, Prince Of Persia, Robo Aleste, Samurai Showdown, Silpheed, Sonic CD, Sol-Feace, The Terminator, and Wolfchild.

Much of this list was made going by dates found online, so some of these titles may have actually been released later on in 1994, after Ground Zero, Texas was reviewed. But it doesn't take an Associate Publisher at a major gaming magazine to figure out how many quality (non-fmv) Sega-CD titles were released well before Ground Zero, Texas.

Incidently, when video game sales/rental chain Microplay went out of business, the local store here carried on and eventually changed their name to Ground Zero. There's even an old musty copy of the game sitting on a shelf in the back of the store. Perhaps the game had another fan as big as Ed Semrad.

"PD Eine, which ostensibly takes place many years after PD Zwei, (Speaking of that, why does every other mag call this game Panzer Dragoon II Zwei? That's like saying Street Fighter II Two or something...) was but a small chapter in the Panzer Dragoon saga..."

-Nick Rox, Layout/Editor Gamefan

I think most people reading this would realize the answer to Nick Rox's question. In fact, it's right there literally two millimetres away from that very same quote. The official Panzer Dragoon II Zwei logo, as it appears on the cover of every version of the game, clearly says "Panzer Dragoon II Zwei". If Nick Rox has a problem with this, he should blame Sega, not "everything other mag".

As for Street Fighter II, that's it's real actual title, "Street Fighter II". If Capcom had put it out as "Street Fighter II Deux", then he'd be talking about the same thing, but would still be wrong. It'd still really be titled Street Fighter II Deux. But if every other mag started calling Street Fighter II, "Street Fighter Deux", then they'd all be the ones making shit up.

But here's the thing, it's actually Nick Rox who insists on calling the original Panzer Dragoon game "PD Eine". But that's not what it's called. It's always just been Panzer Dragoon. Just because a later sequal to a game uses a word or symbol in it's title, it doesn't automatically rename every other game in the series.

Calling the first Panzer Dragoon game "PD Eine" or "Panzer Eine" is like calling the original Street Fighter game "Street Fighter Alpha" just because Street Fighter II was released. Or by the same logic, after the real Street Fighter Alpha game was released in North America, I guess we should all refer to the original Street Fighter game as "Street Fighter Zero" right?

And I guess then that the real name of Panzer Dragoon Saga/Azel must be Panzer Dragoon III Drei?

Remember, it was Nick Rox who started calling everyone on this while within the same sentence was the first and only one to really be guilty of what he was suggesting.

But in the end, the real point Nick Rox was trying to make, is that he can count to two in German.

"Panzer still suffers from grainy false transparencies, but this problem is, sadly, unavoidable on the Saturn"

-Nick Rox, Layout/Editor Gamefan

Here we go again. First of all, we all now know that the Saturn can do transparencies and everything else it wasn't designed to do out-of-the-box through decent programming(look at Panzer Dragoon Saga's multiple colored light sourcing with gourad shading and 3D morphing). But even at that point in the Saturn's life cycle, there were lots of games, like Astal which Dave Halverson still goes on about to this day, which featured true transparencies*.

But even if Nick Rox was oblivious to all the transparency effects used in Saturn games up to the release of Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, the thing is, PDIIZ is one of the Saturn games which features some amazing transparencies. There are even screenshots in the same Gamefan review which show the water transparency effect, with solid 3D objects jumping in and out of it.

It's true that the game also had mesh substitutes for the other transparencies, but that doesn't change the fact that the "unavoidable on Saturn" comment is ridiculous given the game being reviewed and that there still was never any mention of all PDZII's "true" transparencies in the article.