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Review – Clock Tower: Rewind
It's nice to have an official release of Clock Tower. I was hyped, but slept on its initial re-release. Having circled back around, I can finally scratch this classic Japanese horror title off my list. I really hate writing these excerpts because I don't know what information will get you to click.
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Review – Undercover Cops (Arcade)
Ever dream of a beat-'em-up by the Metal Slug crew? That actually happened. Undercover Cops was developed by Meeher, Akio, Susumu, and friends. You can totally tell. But while it absolutely looks the part and features their signature ridiculousness, it is, unfortunately, not the Metal Slug of belt-scrolling brawlers.
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Review – Vigilante 8
After Twisted Metal 2, the series went into a nosedive with the departure of Singletrac. There was no one to where the car combat crown. That is until Luxoflux stepped up with Vigilante 8, a game that is a lot like Twisted Metal but funkier and with dumber objectives.
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Review – Road Rash (32-Bit)
I first played Road Rash (32-Bit) on 3DO Interactive Multiplayer where it stuck with me. As far as Road Rash games go, this is probably the best in the series (if you don't count Road Rash 64, but why would you?). It's also incredibly '90s, which is essentially my comfort food.
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Review – Cool Riders
If you don’t look too closely, it looks like a bunch of thrown-together digitized sprites trying hard to look cool. Like Pit Fighter; exactly like Pit Fighter. But upon closer inspection, you realize that it isn’t just some ill-advised, thrown-together racing game. It knows exactly what it is. I still do not know what chaotic ritual conjured this game, but…
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Review – Cruis’n World
Some of Cruis'n USA's rather wrongheaded choices contributed to a vision and personality that you won’t find in Cruis’n World. If you take out some of the awful jank, you lose part of its identity, as we see with Cruis’n World.
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Review – DuckTales 2
DuckTales is pretty great. Not just the cartoon, but the first NES game which I usually point to as a baseline for licensed platformers. It has unique mechanics partially informed by the subject matter. Duck Tales 2 is more of that. More of that and not much else.
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Review – Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
The sequel to the extremely non-existent Super Puzzle Fighter I and the updated version of the also non-existent Normal Puzzle Fighter II, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo brings you all the puzzling and fighting you'd expect from such a celebrated series. No Zangief, though, so that's a bummer.
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Review – Pu-Li-Ru-La
The beat-'em-up series is a varied as you can get when it comes to putting fists into faces and faces into concrete, but Pu-Li-Ru-La stands apart in its cartoon art-style. It's just too bad that it can't live up to the intense, wall-to-wall weirdness of its third stage.
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Review – Alien vs. Predator (Arcade)
If you were tickling me mercilessly and would only stop if I named what developer made the best beat-’em-ups, I’d say Capcom. Without coercion and with some time to think about it, I might come up with a more interesting answer, but it’s more likely that I’d still just say Capcom. I grew up in rural Ontario, which is a…
