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Review – Dragon Warrior IV
I didn’t really plan on picking up another Dragon Warrior game after finishing Dragon Warrior III. I love the games, but they consume massive amounts of time, and I have other games that need finishing. Yet, Dragon Warrior III left me hungry for more and I had just one more NES title to knock off before I was done. I…
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Review – Clay Fighter
The impact that Street Fighter II had on the industry can’t be understated. It jump started a genre, and soon, the pretenders started crowding in. The market was swamped with 1v1 fighting games, and it became difficult to stand apart from the rest. Some used licensed characters, others went the more violent route, and then there was Clay Fighter To…
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Review – Twisted Metal (PS1)
The original Twisted Metal has been something of a mystery to me. A friend of mine used to own a PS1 (he doesn’t anymore because I own it), but the rental store we frequented only carried the sequel in perpetuity. I have vague recollections of having experienced later entries in the PlayStation series, but never the first. In fact, gazing…
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Review – Super Dodgeball Advance
Oh, I was so totally pumped for the Gameboy Advance release. A total Nintendo fangirl at the time, I was drooling over the new handheld, as well as the impending Gamecube. When release came, I scooped up Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Super Mario Advance, but those weren’t the only games I was excited for. Another was Super Dodgeball…
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Saturday Morning Scrutiny – The Legend of Zelda (Season 2)
The initial run of the cartoon adaptation of The Legend of Zelda ended in 1989 after one season as the special Friday edition of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. Both Link and Zelda would show up occasionally in the second season of Captain N, which provides some closure to the plot of the original series, but that was the…
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Saturday Morning Scrutiny: Captain N: The Game Master (Season 1)
Back in the 8-bit era of video games, a lot of imagination was required to fill the gaps between a game’s box art, and the low-detail, pixelated mess that was on screen. Even the box art wasn’t always reliable. Mega Man’s North American box seemed to imply that the title character was a helmeted, middle-aged man in the midst of…
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Review – Legacy of the Wizard
The NES library is rather cluttered with obscure, Metroid-like sidescrollers contained within interconnected worlds, from Goonies 2 to Rygar, and I’m still surprised by how often I turn over a rock and come across a new one. Legacy of the Wizard was something I bought years ago with the intention of playing immediately, only to have it languish on my…
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Review – Sin & Punishment
Every once and a while, you may hear me gush about Japanese developer Treasure, creators of such treats as Gunstar Heroes and Ikaruga. None of their games crack the loose inventory of my favourite games, but every time I play one, I’m always stricken by the sheer imagination that’s always on display. They’re weird, but not necessarily in a quirky…
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Review – Yume Penguin Monogatari
While we got some decent Konami games over here in North America, we didn’t get to see the sort of brand unity that they had in Famicom. We really got ripped off, not seeing a hair of the Ganbare Goemon series until the SNES, never really getting a look at Parodius, and even getting snubbed for Gradius II. I’d have…
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Review – Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
I can’t account for my fascination with the character of Travis Touchdown. He’s a womanizing, awkward, selfish, and overall pathetic character, but I find him difficult to fully hate. Even in terms of his characterization, he’s inconsistently written to the point where it’s sometimes hard to peg whether his pseudo-intellectual musings on the topic of bloodlust are sincere, or just…
