BLUE ROOM REVIEWS

    Yet another new article. Which is sweet since it means less writing for me. I digress, the Blue Room Reviews are written by my roommate and no-longer NHL 2005 whipping-boy Scott Fennell. He'll be doing reviews of whatever he feels like in the areas of music, movies, and whatnot. Enjoy!

Traumatising Head Blow! One Point.

 To understand taekwondo all you have to do is think about Korean people for a minute. What do you do when you need to defend yourselves against richer, more populous nations, whose soldiers are bigger than yours?  Learn to kick people in the head very high and very hard. Legs are much stronger than arms, and have better reach too. Knowing this about taekwondo, I eagerly downloaded Taekwon-do off coolrom.com.

First, a handy language feature. The game was made in Japan, but if your Japanese needs work, you’re in luck: you can change it to Korean.  

Not that language matters much. The joy of the game is in kicking the crap out of a bunch of nameless guys who look like extras on VIP. Although almost all the characters have Korean names, none of them look Korean. One looks suspiciously like Jean-Claude Van Damme, and they’re all wearing bandanas.

 Fights are fast, easy to manage, and brutal. There are at least a dozen kicks to administer, and once I managed to knock some poor bastard out by jumping and punching the top of his head. Conveniently, a rare bit of English slips in to describe one thing about each fighter. You can choose from Speed, Power, Defence, Jump, and some All Around guys. Jump was definitely the most fun (though I’ve heard Speed is a good time).

 A fight is divided into 5 rounds, or 2 minutes max.  You can win a round by counterattacking (knocking the wind out him) or by scoring a critical hit (inflicting brain damage). You can also end the show early by beating your opponent into unconsciousness. Two effective methods are roundhouse jump-kicks and the classic ‘corner and pummel’ technique. Best part? When the fool wakes up he kneels in respect, providing a great chance for your fighter to pose dramatically. 

Taekwon-do is the best thing that never happened to Canadian Super Nintendo. If playing a wicked SNES game gives you uncontrollable flashbacks to 1995, don’t fight them. Internet porn will still be around when you come back.