The jackal is approaching the end of its years. It was chased into these sewers ages ago and has finally claimed them for his own. And now he prowls, a vicious shadow felling the panthers of the sewer as if they were lambs. No resistance down here, except the Tigers. Mate in tow, he crawls through the muck looking to find a suitable place to pass on his legacy. He drops into a nest – it’s crawling with tigers! He barely makes it out alive, and makes a hasty retreat across the sewers to the one other place he remembers. It’s farther, but hopefully it’s safer. He makes it there while he barely has any virility left. His line is secured, for now.
Food Fighters Are A Cut Above – Tantalizingly Tasty Toys
There are the mainline toys that everyone knows. GI Joe, Transformers, Ghostbusters, TMNT, Masters of the Universe and so on and so forth. These are what stand out in memory because these are what people still talk about. But there are so many toys that don’t fit into the mainstream. Those that may have only appeared for one or two years, those that were little more obscure but just as special. Sectaurs, Inhumanoids, Barnyard Commandos, Visionaries, Army Ants, Rock Lords and their ilk. Even if some had comics and shows, they are sort of getting swallowed by antiquity and so their novelty is not lost on collector’s. Mattel’s Food Fighters fits this bill.
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The Amazing Equinox – We’re Off To The Witch
Rewind. I was at an EB Games that had recently opened. They had a game I had always wanted – Equinox. However, at the time I had already spent my cash and didn’t have my debit. I was determined to go back and buy it, but when I did – it was gone. Denied. Never to see it crop up in the wild again. But I’ve rectified that error, and I recently procured a copy for myself.
I was spurned on by my completion of Solstice, the “skeleton in my gaming closet.” It just so happens that Equinox is Solstice 2. A proper sequel featuring Shadax’s son with some solid talent behind it, designed by the Pickford brothers with both Tim and Geoff Follin as composers. And given my love for Solstice, this was a natural choice for me. Does Equinox hold up to its predecessor?
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Godzilla on Game Boy – The Big G Goes Bite-Size
Sometimes you get a game that just doesn’t feel like everything meshes. Godzilla on the Game Boy is such a game. I can’t help but wonder – was this meant to be a Godzilla game, originally? Apparently this is adapted from an MSX game which appears to match the aesthetic and mechanics. But I can’t help but feel like this is meant to be different, and I think that’s where this game gets a lot of undue negativity.
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NES Round-Up: Ten Games That You Should Play!
If I may be so bold as to say that the NES has a lot to offer then I will be so bold as to say it: The NES has a lot to offer. This is just a fun article where I flipped through my Nintendo tapes to pick out a few that I think people should play. Some are better known than others, some are pretty obvious choices if you know me. Some didn’t make the list because I would rather write full articles about them, but being on this list certainly doesn’t preclude a game from that distinction!
If you are an NES enthusiast, either someone experienced who is maybe looking for something cool to try or a newcomer who wants to know a few games that are worth looking out for then this list is my contribution.
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Cruel Cruel Summer Solstice
Sometimes a game crawls into the back of your mind and you say you want clear it, and have every intention to do so, but you just can’t motivate yourself to see it through. It’s through no fault of the game, it’s just the stigma that if you clear this game, then what? Having a skeleton in your closet in some strange way gives you an endgame, something to look forward to. But what’s the point in looking forward to completing something if you never in fat complete it?
Solstice fit this bill for me. It was a game I loved, I promoted it as one of the best challenges and best soundtracks the NES had to offer. But I had only competed roughly 50% of it prior to yesterday, where I finally went ahead and clobbered this one.
Driven Precision – Spelunker HD
“HD Remakes” are becoming more and more common. I’ve already written about the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection but just as common are revamped games released through digital distribution channels. These are not always just new textures and reworked resolutions. Sometimes it is a complete remake, as is the case of Spelunker HD.
And while Spelunker HD is certainly a remake, it is still quite reverent of its source material and is unabashedly old school in its design and execution. A lot of games I talk about on this blog have a love/hate dichotomy. This is taken more towards the extreme with Spelunker HD which retains the infamous flavour of the original release.
Piping Hot and Fresh – The Samurai Pizza Cats Game
Many people have those cartoons that stick with them forever. Myself, I am a long time (but not exclusively) fan of toy commercials like She-Ra, G.I.JOE, Transformers, The Real Ghostbusters, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The list goes on. I don’t care how silly and at times shameless these cartoons were I didn’t care because they were also very entertaining. So enter Samurai Pizza Cats, which defined after school programming for me for a number of years. Touted on YTV as sort of a tongue-in-cheek TMNT I had to give it a look.
And brother, I fell in love. And not just with Polly Esther ;). This show captured my heart and my attention. It was irreverent and silly done right, a self-deprecating vaudevillian display of set pieces and characters.
Of course, Samurai Pizza cats didn’t have a marketing frenzy over here but I had always longed for a game. Hell, even Bucky O’Hare had an NES game of his own, and a very good one at that. But I always longed for something tangible to own with respect to the Samurai Pizza Cats. I was very excited (yet nervous) to discover that there was a Famicom release! It was great news, as long as it didn’t turn out like the Transformers with Convoy no Nazo!
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ICO: Castle in the Mist, a Novelization in our Midst
Its unusual for me to pick up a book that was adapted from a video game. The last time I picked up a game-to-print adaptation were for some Ace Attorney manga a few years ago. So it’s not really a frequent affair for me. But I was drawn to the ICO novelization due to how the game handled its storytelling. I was interested to see how the license would be handled, how much it would differ from the very player driven narrative of ICO, and if it would hold its own against similar novels as a standalone title.
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Master Using Them And You Can Have Them – Cards of Legend
The Legend of Zelda. Galvanizing and polarizing. Mythos rich and disputed, breathless masses with horns locked about game quality and game canon. A fruitless dance. Futile, exhausting.
The fanbase has to chill, brother. They need an outlet for this misdirected energy. They’ve got to reach deep into that treasure chest and pull out the key to resolution. A mechanism to settle things. Sometimes you just need to slap the cards on the table and let them do the talking.
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