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Review – Pikmin 2
The launch of Pikmin was a reasonable success for Nintendo, especially considering it was a new license. It wasn’t quite the numbers that Mario Sunshine or The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker pulled, but it did push over a million, so that’s nice for it. In 2004, it was time for a sequel, which would take the form of the appropriately named Pikmin…
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Review – McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure
McDonald’s, being the ubiquitous fast food chain in the United States, is quite the low hanging fruit. It is most associated with perpetuating obesity by dealing in food that is almost entirely fat and salt with no nutrition in between. I mean, they’re a corporation, which means, by law, their first priority is pleasing their shareholders, and they legally can’t…
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Review – Super 3-D Noah’s Ark
On the ashes of Atari, Nintendo forged an empire in the late 80’s through a mix of good games and evil business practices. Nintendo of America’s early days were marked with anti-competitive practices that broke down in the 90’s under the weight of how illegal they were. That’s a topic for another day, but suffice to say that Nintendo held…
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Review – Army Men: Turf War
Turf War is the last of the three Army Men titles on Game Boy Advance. It's interesting, since it uses 3D models over 2D backdrops. Sort of like the Tony Hawk GBA games. Unfortunately, that's about the only thing interesting about it. It isn't as bad as it could be, though.
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Review – The Sims (Console)
When The Sims launched on PC in 2000, it quickly established itself as a landmark title. It was the first major success for Maxis since SimCity 2000’s 1993 release, selling somewhere in the neighbourhood of 14 million copies and establishing itself as one of the best selling PC games of all time. Having said that, it has aged horrifically, having…
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Review – Coffee Crisis
The beat-’em-up genre is one of the simplest formulas in gaming. During the early 90’s, following the release of Final Fight in the arcades, the genre exploded and found itself host to all manner of licensed tie ins. If you had a super-hero, action movie, or mascot that you needed to cram into an interactive format, the conveyor-belt beat-’em-up was…
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Review – Rad Racer
If you asked me to name ten games that helped define the NES, there’s a chance that I’d drop Rad Racer into that list, but probably not for the reason you’d expect. Sure, it sold somewhere around 2 million units and established itself as the preeminent racing game on the console at the time of its 1987 release. It came…
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Review – Zero Tolerance
Here’s a very specific fact about me that you didn’t want to know and probably don’t care about: I love 2.5D first-person shooters. We’re talking the raycasted oldies like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. I don’t know why, I just love the aesthetic. The simple or abstract environments with their billboarded sprites. The invitingly humpable walls. That’s my scene. It…
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Review – Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball
I remember when Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball landed on the Xbox, back in ’03. I was still in high school, but even amongst my more testosterone bloated friends, there wasn’t much interest. Ogling digital females was just considered kind of sad in the circles I ran with, it was equated to a guy admitting that he’s unable to…
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Review – The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
It’s unfortunate that The Elder Scrolls: Arena didn’t exactly fill my gravy boat, but then, despite it being the first in a venerable series of games, I’ve never heard anyone refer to it as their favourite title in said series. Its sequel, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, on the other hand, I’ve heard come up a few times. It’s rare.…