Primal Instinct

Remember when fighting games were the biggest quarter munchers in the arcade? Some of my most fond memories were when Brian and I would run into our local arcade with a stack of dot-matrix printed move lists on every new fighting game. I got my ass paddled a few times for running the printer ribbon dry.

For me Primal Rage was the end of my craze for fighting games. Jurassic Park meets Mortal Kombat! How the fuck is that not the best game ever made?

For shame Atari, for shame...

Another Post

“Out of This World,” also known as “Another World” in Europe and “Outer World” in Japan, was little known when it was first released, but was very innovative for its time. It is a cinematic platformer originally released in 1991 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and for MS-DOS, and was ported to various other consoles later.

I played the game on my SNES as a kid. Or rather, I tried to play the game on my SNES for about an hour and gave up when I didn’t understand what to do. There is no text in the game, other than the title. There is no speaking in the game, either; characters interact mostly with hand gestures and facial expressions. The environment itself is a puzzle that you must interact with to solve other puzzles in order to progress through the game. I had little patience for it, and besides, I had a princess in Hyrule to save. I spent very little time on this game. I sort of regret that now. It really is a great game.

You play a young red-headed physicist named Lester who is teleported to an alien world when lightening hits his laboratory during an experiment. He must escape many dangerous creatures, including fanged worms, a lion-ape thing, and man-eating seaweed. Once making it through all of that in one piece, he is captured and enslaved by the resident alien humanoid race. Lester must try to escape from the prison with the help of another imprisoned alien, and continue to evade guards and battle monsters as he and his friend adventure through many different environments solving numerous puzzles.

While the game was frustrating as a kid, as an adult I have more appreciation for the visual style and gameplay. It features colorful vector graphics and animated cut scenes that possess a sense of humor. You can walk, run, and jump, and kick and, later, use a blaster gun to attack enemies. There are multiple checkpoints in each level and unlimited lives, and after completing levels you receive a code to use the next time you play, so you don’t have to start over from the beginning.

Though it requires a little patience, “Out of This World” is a challenging adventure game that is definitely worth a play. A high-resolution download for the original game can be found at: http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/

I’ve even heard rumors that it will be coming out for Xbox Live Arcade soon…

Bo Knows

Montana to Rice, Montana to Rice, Montana to Rice, Montana to Rice, Montana to Rice...

VG History Should be a 3000 Level Class

Next-Gen.biz has an interesting article up on the most influential moments in gaming history over at their site. The article picks the biggest event for the past 30 years. Some of the bigs include...

1977 - The Release of the Atari 2600
I so wish they would bring back wood panelling on consoles.

1982 - E.T. The Harbinger of Death
Who would have thought the ugly alien could help bring down an entire industry?

1985 - Nintendo
Nintendo releases the NES and we don't "play video games" anymore, we play "Nintendo".

1994 - ESRB
Mortal Kombat and Night Trap pissed enough people off to warrant a new ratings committee.

I still got GTA without being carded, suckers...

Well it's kind of retro...

Brian and I have been absolutely enamored by Bioshock. After the demo hit on XBL last week there has not been one conversation between us where we didn't say something like "I want to take Bioshock behind the middle school and get it pregnant."

The last time I remember everyone going this ape shit for a game was God of War and a few years before that with Knights of the Old Republic. I truly think we are witnessing the release of Game of the Year and the birth of an instant classic.

Oh, I guess it's retro because it's set in the 60s... yeah that's the ticket.

A Blog to the Past

I was a late-bloomer to the gaming scene, not acquiring a SNES, my fist gaming console, until about 1996, around the end of its life cycle. I remember owning and playing a few classics: Super Mario All Stars (on which I played the hell out of Super Mario 3), the Donkey Kong Country series, and, of course, Super Mario World. However, the one game that really stands out, and one of the best games made for the SNES, maybe one of the best games of all time, was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Sometimes called Zelda III, this top-down action-adventure game was released in the United States in April of 1992 and was the first in the series to introduce the Master Sword, as well as other features we’ve come to expect from Zelda games such as multi-level dungeons and parallel worlds.

Link, the hero of the story, must save Princess Zelda, the Triforce, and the land of Hyrule from the clutches of the evil Ganon, who has been imprisoned in the Sacred Realms, a parallel world that he has twisted into what has become the Dark World, and who eventually finds a link between the two worlds in order to rule them both. Playing as Link, one must first collect three Pendants in the Light World to obtain the Master Sword (which can later be tempered to become more powerful). Once in possession of the sword, and after defeating the sorcerer Agahnim, there are seven dungeons in the Dark World to conquer in order to rescue the seven maidens, who, once together, allow Link to enter Ganon’s tower and fight him. Ganon escapes at the end of the battle and crash-lands into the Pyramid of Power, where Link is able to follow, drop through the ceiling, and defeat Ganon once and for all, restoring the Sacred Realms and rescuing Princess Zelda.

I can’t even count how many times I played this game all the way through—five or six, at least. After I knew how to solve the puzzles, I played through it again and again, focusing on collecting all the heart pieces or seeing how fast I could get through it, or just to hear the complex and sophisticated, yet playfully addicting, musical score. [I sometimes catch myself humming the Dark World theme to this day (doo doooooooo, doo doo doo doodadoo…)]. I think the story was most compelling to me, though: rescuing Princess Zelda, saving Hyrule, and all of the side stories and quests along the way (my favorite was acquiring the flute and the bird). It was probably the most in-depth game I had ever played or even seen before, and I just couldn’t put it down. I even packed my SNES and copy of A Link to the Past and took it along with me to college (because sometimes saving a Princess is much more important than passing classes).

And on top of all that, the game has aged quite well; the gameplay is tight and natural-feeling (especially with a SNES controller in your hands), and, though it’s 2-D, the graphics still have a bit of a modern feel to them: not too fancy, not too real, well animated, and slightly cartoony, with detailed sprites that aren’t so detailed that they take themselves too seriously.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is probably my favorite game of all time. If anyone out there hasn’t yet played this game, and don’t plan to, they are certainly missing out on one of the best action-adventure games ever produced.

Win a Date With Mark Hamill

Wing Commander Arena is coming soon to XBLA and to celebrate EA is giving every retro gamer teh awesome. The lucky winner will have to find room in their studio apartment for every Wing Commander game ever made as well as the systems to play them on. So if your Sega CD and 3DO got sold at your mother's garage sell EA has got you covered.

One winner will receive...

1 Sega Genesis w/Sega CD

- 2 Controllers
- 4 way Controller Adapter
- Wing Commander Sega CD

1 Super Nintendo

- 1 Controller
- Wing Commander SNES
- Wing Commander: Secret Missions SNES

1 Playstation Console

- 1 Controller
- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger Playstation
- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom Playstation

One Panasonic 3DO

- 2 Controllers
- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger 3DO
- Super Wing Commander 3DO

Game Boy Advanced

- Wing Commander Prophecy

Gateway 2000 Pentium One PC w/Windows '95

- 1 CRT Monitor
- 1 Mouse
- 1 Keyboard
- 1 Set of Speakers
- Wing Commander
- Wing Commander: Deluxe Edition
- Wing Commander II: Vengence of the Kilrathi
- Wing Commander II: Vengence of the Kilrathi Deluxe Edition
- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
- Wing Commander Academy

PLUS


Xbox 360 Elite Hardware + 11,200 Microsoft Points and two runners up will receive 11,200 points for Xbox Live

To enter just sign up for EA's junk email bot.

The Win 95 machine would be nice, but having the Sega CD and 3DO I could finally replay those wonderful FMV Jurassic Park games.

Retro Shopping Report for 07/24/2007

I went out shopping with my girlfriend on Saturday and managed to snap up two pieces of retro gaming goodness.

We hit all of the regular shops, including the pawn shops, the antique shops and the just plain junk shops. What I'd call the junk shops paid off this trip.

The Super Scope, the Super Nintendo's official light gun accessory cost me $10 in the box. It is however missing Super Scope 6, the pack in game. I've seen those pretty cheap by themselves in pawn shops however. The Super Scope was somewhat of a commercial failure in its own time, having only 11 titles published that could make use of it, one being the pack in Super Scope 6. A few of these titles only implemented the Super Scope in a cursory fashion, notably The Hunt For Red October only used the Super Scope for its bonus stages. Contributing to its unpopularity was undoubtedly the units bulk. The Super Scope measures roughly 2.5 feet in length, making it quite unwieldy. It also killed batteries like red rings kill 360s. Rechargeable batteries cost at the time made them prohibitively expensive to use in wireless gaming devices of the day.

I remember renting the Super Scope, along with Super Scope 6 from a local video store as a kid and having to persuade my parents into making the obscene $75 deposit. Other than that, I've never played another game that utilized it.

Day Dreamin' Davey is an action game developed by Sculptured Software and published by HAL Laboratory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've never played it personally, so I'm going to have to phone this one in. From what I can gather it is an action game in which players make their way through periods in history, to eventually arrive at a final showdown at the OK Corral. In any event, it's another NES game that I didn't have. It's rated at a B+ rarity on the Etler list. For $3 I'll buy about anything.

Bomberman jihads Xbox Live Arcade

Bomberman Live released on XBLA last Wednesday, and thankfully it's much better than its previous Xbox 360 incarnation.

I purchased the game earlier this week and since then have had a chance to spend some time with it. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, although my previous Bomberman experience is fairly limited. I admit that I completely sucked ass, losing my first 10 consecutive games against the easy (read: retard) computer opponents, but I've since learned what the hell I'm doing.

Bomberman Live includes new maps, along with the old standby "classic arena". These maps all have various gimmicks to them. There's the futuristic map with teleporter tiles, the desert map with quicksand, and a pirate themed map with power-ups in the center. The classic map is still quite fun to play itself, and most of the new maps are as well. I found however that some of them got annoying pretty quickly. When playing online I could often hear people bemoaning certain maps popping up.

There are four game modes to play, which at first might sound interesting, but you'll quickly realize that there are really only 2 modes with slight variations. In addition to the standard mode there is Paint Bomb, Zombie and Bombing Run. In Paint Bomb mode blasts paint the areas of the floor they touch your color. The player with the highest number of tiles when time expires wins. Zombie mode is a slight variation on this, in which you respawn after being killed, with your painted tiles reset. Zombie matches are frequently decided in the last 10 seconds because of these mechanics. Bombing Run seems to behave like the classic mode except everything is a little bit faster. These modes feel fairly uninspired, but Zombie is a nice diversion.

Complementing the array of maps and game types are the power-up sets. When choosing the parameters for a match the player is presented with "Beginner", "Intermediate" and "Advanced" power-up sets. There is an additional set of power-downs that can be enabled, as well as "Skulls" which act as another form of power-down. These power-downs seems to prove more frustrating than entertaining and will likely see little use. I found that the game became much less interesting when using anything but the Advanced power-up set. Switching to Beginner power-ups can be useful for learning how to play as it removes most of the complexity of Bomberman Live, however.

New to Bomberman Live is the ability to change the costume of your character. As you play games against the computer you can collect costume pieces to alter your character. These costumes can be used in multiplayer, making what seems like an afterthought actually useful. The costumes help to lessen the confusion of which character you are in an 8 player match. Overall the costumes are fairly lacking, but there is an achievement for tracking them all down so I'm sure some of you will spend hours to do it.

Four player local multiplayer is supported, the other four slots can be filled with computer opponents. Eight player multiplayer is available online. There is some fun to be had offline with Bomberman but the computer opponents definitely lack the creativity of their human counterparts. The game really shines in online multiplayer. The ability to get 4 local players together into a game with 4 online players is very nice. I found online play to be very smooth. Matchmaking seems to work properly and currently getting a game is not difficult. The game played virtually lag free for me, which is important in a timing sensitive game like Bomberman.

Overall I'd say that I've been having a lot of fun with Bomberman, and I'd certainly rate it as one of my better purchases on Xbox Live Arcade. If you plan to play it online or with friends I'd say it's a great investment. If you're planning on playing it offline primarily, you'd have to ask yourself just how much you like Bomberman. I will, however, say this: It's just more Bomberman. If you're looking for something revolutionary this isn't it. This is a very well put together, competent showing of Bomberman. Looking at it in that context, I enjoyed it a lot. Hudson didn't take a lot of chances with this release, but hey, follow the link at the top of this post if you want to see what happened last time they took chances.

Blast Processing Comes to XBLA

The game that made Sega a household name is available for 400 points on Xbox Live Arcade. Sonic the Hedgehog was the title that made Super Nintendo owners jealous. Sure Nintendo fans had their wonderful Super Mario World but Sega threw down the gauntlet when Sonic hit store shelves. Nintendo had Mario and Sega had Sonic. The "Mascot Wars" left countless thousands in its wake.

Recent Sonic games have been absolute shit, with the exception of a few 2D titles like Sonic Rush for the DS. Playing this game now reminds us why people went nuts for the "blue blur". The game shines when Sonic runs fast. That's it. Whenever Sonic slows down and starts doing classic platforming the game and fun come to a screeching halt.

Here is a note to Sonic devs… "Sonic fast = good. Sonic slow = shit"

Beginnings

I'm not always sure where to start this kind of thing.

Some prefer to jump right into it like they've been doing it for years. Some would start with some kind of "Grand Opening" post, quite possibly with contests and give aways. Others might start by telling you about themselves, and why they feel so qualified to write on a subject, and why you should think their opinions are worthwhile.

I think I'll just tell you who I am.

My name is Brian. I'm 24 years old. That puts me somewhere between the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System as far as age is concerned. Oddly, for someone born in the early 80's, I can count on one hand the games I've played on the 2600. My generation (if society can come to a consensus on which generation I belong to) seems to remember the NES much more fondly. While I can dimly remember playing Pac-Man on a 2600 my memories of Super Mario Brothers seem resplendent by comparison.

In my other life I'm a computer programmer, which by all accounts would have probably made me a gamer, were I not predisposed. I, like other programmers I'm sure, became interested in programming through video games. Somewhere along the way I got lost, however, and ended up writing C# for e-commerce sites. This story seems dishearteningly common in this industry.

If I've done my job perhaps some of you people out there will return to read my subsequent posts.