You have to understand that I can rarely complete a conversation on games without bringing up the Contra series, and most importantly, Contra III: Alien Wars. I played the previous big Contra games when I was a kid and had fun with them, but when Contra III showed up, it exploded my brain. You have to understand this if you hope to imagine the excitement I felt when Contra 4 was announced for the Nintendo DS.
Needless to say, I’ve played the game and it’s great . . . but I have my complaints. (more…)
Books are the most rich source of information and inspiration that game players don’t use. If you’re looking for some new resources, you may be interested in a short list that I’ve compiled. Each one is worth its own review and maybe someday I’ll do just that.
These books are guaranteed to give players a greater appreciation of their games and help developers make better ones. (more…)
Faxanadu might be one of the best games you’ll never play.
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: Nintendo
Release: November 16th, 1989
“I’ve been on a long journey. I came back to my home town to
find it is almost deserted. The gate is closed, people are gone, and
the walls are crumbling. I wonder what happened?”
You’re a worn warrior returning to your home of Eolis, a village just outside of the World Tree. You have nothing but the ragged clothes on your back. You discover that the home you return to is not how you remember it. The lakes have dried up and it has become a monster-infested wasteland.
Sounds like the beginning of a grand adventure to me.
Continuing my coverage of the Wii, I must today discuss the “Check Mii Out Channel.” I’m happy to announce that the first Mii contest is finally over and this, ladies and gentlemen, is my award; a souvenir photo:
You may notice, I went for a more classical approach. He is based on the original Mario, with small pixel eyes and an open mouth.
I assumed everyone was going to make Marios that looked the same, and so I made one that was more individualistic. I was only half right. While voting, I saw hundreds of Marios that generally looked nothing like Mario or were strange spins on him. The top 50 winners though were basically identical, which is somewhat disappointing. My Mario was in the “7th level.” I’m not quite sure what that means, but I was shown an animation of Mario running up a Fuji-esque mountain and he stopped near the snowcapped top, so I’m happy with that.
For those of you that haven’t heard, this channel allows online Wii owners to upload their miis for public viewing and judgment. You can view public miis with a random “grab bag,” by popularity, or by searching for a specific type of or individual mii. That’s pretty cool, but the real fun is in the contests.
Nintendo is hosting contests on this channel that ask players to design miis to a given theme. The first worldwide contest asked for “Mario without his hat.” After that we saw “A Pilgrim from the first Thanksgiving,” “The Tooth Fairy,” and “Cleopatra” as national contests in the US. I understand that in Europe, instead of the pilgrim contest, players were asked to produce “King Arthur.” (more…)
I was excited when this game was announced. A sequel to one of my favorite games. And Treasure never makes sequels. If you’re not familiar with the work of Treasure, I wrote some impressions on their title Radiant Silvergun a few weeks ago.
Unfortunately this wasn’t the kind of sequel I was expecting. This game retains many of the fundamental qualities that made the first one so great but it’s missing something. Soul. And that’s ironic because the ridiculous storyline in the game revolves around your character being possessed by the souls of the heroes from the first game.
I have a tall stack of puzzle games for the Nintendo DS. I just added another to the stack today when picked up a copy of Gunpey DS, on impulse, during my visit to Fry’s Electronics today. I’ve only heard of this game because of an interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi on Gamasutra. It’s another music-themed puzzle game from Q Entertainment (Lumines and Meteos). It was only $10 so I decided to give it a go.
So I took a look at Gameshot.org because of a few referrals they sent back here (they grabbed our LUV Tank game) and noticed this pleasant surprise on their front page…
At first I was attracted to the awesome art style. All pretty pixel work. The description said something about it being a platformer with a Yin Yang twist so I wanted to see if it went beyond a gimmick. I was impressed before I even finished the first stage.
I was reading a GameSetWatch post about an interview with the Panzer Dragoon creator and I thought to myself, “Shit, I still haven’t managed to play Panzer Dragoon Saga yet!” If you’re not familiar with the game, it was the last installment of the series on the Sega Saturn, a 4-disc epic RPG. It’s regarded as one of the greatest RPGs but the catch is that it was released in extremely limited quantities in North America. I’ve heard rumors of something like only 25,000 copies were created since it was the end of Saturn’s life-cycle. Copies run for about $120 to this day.
So I went to find out if it was emulated yet. I managed to find a torrent of not only Panzer Dragoon Saga but Radiant Silvergun as well. Regarded as one of the best shooters ever but never released stateside. The game was created by Treasure. I became a Treasure whore solely because of Guardian Heroes but I never imagined what could be so great about a shooter game. Copies of this game sell for up to $200. I finally understand what the hype was about. This is an amazing game.
