Wrecking Crew was an old Nintendo game that had a construction theme. This particular title was available on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and in the arcades on three different hardware platforms, the Nintendo Vs. Unisystem, the Nintendo Vs. Dualsystem, and the Play Choice 10. The Play Choice version and the home version were completely identical, while the Vs. version only varied in a few small ways.

You control Mario in this game, although he is a contruction worker, rather than a plumber like he usually is, and he looks a bit different as well. To complete each level you have to smash everything breakable on the screen with your big construction hammer. There are 100 different levels to conquer. Many of the levels can only be completed one way, and making a single error will cause you to fail at your task. It is very easy to get stuck if you are not careful. Each level has several enemies, but you have no way to attack them directly. They usually move in a semi-random pattern that tends to make them pop up in all the wrong places at all the wrong times. Very few of the levels can be completed without having to do quite a bit of enemy dodging.

Wrecking Crew used a NES feature that did not exist, that is the ability to save your custom levels. The level editor was there. You could make custom levels and then play them instantly. But there was also a save and load menu, which did not do anything, Excitebike had this same menu as well. The instruction manual said that an expansion for the NES that was "coming soon" would be used with these features. It has been 18 years, and I am still waiting for that expansion to come out.

This title is much longer and has far more replay value than any of Mario's other early titles, even the venerable Donkey Kong only had four levels, while this game has 100 different levels, and is far more challenging. The graphics and music do not really push the capabilities of the hardware, but they are decent enough that they don't really get in the way of things.

You have several options if you would like to play this title yourself. The NES version and the arcade versions are both emulated by several different emulators. The original Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge should be available cheaply on eBay or in your local used games shop. This is a good title to have, since it was one of the games available when the NES first launched. If you have Nintendo Vs. arcade hardware, then you can convert your existing Vs. game to this title simply by burning an EPROM and a color PROM, and installing them on your Vs. motherboard. The MAME romset for this game has the proper files inside the zip archive.

The Wrecking Crew is a name applied by drummer Hal Blaine in his autobiography, and since widely accepted, for the loose conglomeration of session musicians that often played together in LA in the mid-60s.

Blaine, the union rep, would often put together the musicians for sessions, and he tended to pick the same few musicians - guitarist/bassist Carol Kaye, bassist Ray Pohlman, guitarists Glen Campbell, Tommy Tedesco and Barney Kessel, pianists Leon Russel, Mac Rebbenack (aka Dr John), keyboardist Larry Knechtel etc.

These musicians often worked in various configurations for Phil Spector, and once it became known in the industry who the players were on those sessions, most of the producers in LA were using the Wrecking Crew, or members thereof.

As a result, the same core group of musicians ended up playing on records by the Beach Boys, Spector, Jan And Dean, Nancy Sinatra, Love, Simon And Garfunkel, Frank Zappa, the Monkees, the Byrds, almost every Motown artist, almost every TV soundtrack, etc.

Of course every producer chose their own favourite musicians out of this small pool (for example Brian Wilson particularly favoured Kaye but never used Rebenack as far as I am aware) but if you hear any record made in LA between 1963 and 1968, chances are at least three of the names above are on there.

A group of villains published by Marvel Comics. The Wrecking Crew first appeared as a group in Defenders #17 in 1974.

If you are searching for incredible destructive power with little purpose, you would be hard pressed to do better than the quartet known as the Wrecking Crew. These four criminals have faced in their group or individual exploits the likes of the Avengers, Defenders, Spider-Man, Thor and other heroes over the years, but usually they serve as the muscle for someone else's plans like Baron Zemo when they worked with the Masters of Evil or the Doomsday Man.

The origin of the group begins with one of their number, the cirminal known as the Wrecker. Born Dirk Garthwaite, this large muscular man soon found that he could use his superior strength to force others into doing what he wanted. Eventually his bullying, brash attitude lost him every legitimate way of making money, so Garthwaite dressed himself in a simple costume and armed himself with a crowbar, adopting the name the Wrecker and began to pursue a life of crime.

Garthwaite probably would have lived the rest of his days as a two bit crook, if not for the day that he broke into a hotel room looking for money to steal. Unbeknownst to him, Garthwaite had broken into a hotel room currently occupied by the Norse god Loki who had been stripped of his powers by his father Odin and banished to Earth. While Garthwaite searched the room, he donned Loki's helmet. Suddenly, Karnilla, the Queen of the Norns, appeared and mistaking Garthwaite for Loki, bestowed upon him incredible mystic power that boosted Garthwaite's strength, making him truly like his adopted name, a wrecker. (The Wrecker's origin first appeared in Tales to Astonish #63 in 1965)

Garthwaite clashed a number of times over the years with Loki's half-brother Thor until such time as the Norn queen's power was drawn out of the Wrecker by Thor. Thor used his control of lightning to draw the power back into the crowbar, effectively depowering the Wrecker. While in jail, Garthwaite met three other inmates, a ex-scientist named Dr. Eliot Franklin, a farmhand named Philip Calusky, and an ex-army sargeant named Henry Camp. The quartet plotted and eventually broke out of jail and recovered the crowbar. While all four were holding the mystically enhanced crowbar, a bolt of lightning struck the crowbar transferring a portion of Karnilla's power to each of the four men. The four men decided to use their new found powers by committing crimes together chosing to take identities based upon construction equipment like some kind of Norn magic powered version of the Village People with a Tonka Truck obsession. Garthwaite once again adopted his identity as the Wrecker, Camp became Bulldozer (who prefers to use his superior strength to charge his opponents), Calusky became Piledriver who prefers to use his super-human strength to punch, and Franklin adopted a steel wrecking ball as a weapon and took the name Thunderball.

The four fought the likes of the Defenders and were part of the Marvel 12 issue crossover called the Secret Wars. They followed Baron Zemo during the take-over of the Avengers mansion and aided in beating Hercules to the point of putting him into a coma.Of late, the four have been involved in an attempt to capture the former Ms. Marvel for the villain known as the Doomsday Man.

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