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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 – 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…
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Review – Chibi-Robo
Chibi-Robo is certainly a special game for me. I fell in love with it before release, while I was in college. On its day of release, I braved some harsh February Ottawa weather to go and find a copy at one of the nearby game stores. I say nearby, but it was at least a 45-minute walk. It left a…
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Review – Super Mario RPG
It’s impossible to state what an event Super Mario RPG was in my childhood. I could spin quite a few yarns about my initial experiences with the game, like how, when I would rent it, it would come with its Player’s Guide. Or that time my mom hooked this really crappy TV up so I could play it in my…
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Review – Pilotwings 64
The original Pilotwings was an effective launch title for the SNES, because it successfully demonstrated the amazing sprite scaling and rotating capabilities of the the console, effectively named Mode-7. It was colourful, relaxing, and then it forced you through an aggravating helicopter mission for no reason. I enjoyed it, but that helicopter mission can go boil in tar. It makes…
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Review – Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
While the Game Boy was released in 1989 to near-instant popularity, it would take developers a few years to actually come to grips with the little grey brick’s eccentricities. Early games on the handheld tended to be either single screen puzzle or arcade games, and attempts at porting the gameplay of existing NES licenses. This resulted in games like Castlevania:…
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Review – Pilotwings
When the Super Nintendo finally landed on Western shores in 1991, it brought with it three games. Super Mario World and F-Zero have gone on to be legends in their own rights, but the third game is a little more obscure. Pilotwings may seem like the less exciting choice when stood up next to a Mario game and a hyper-fast…
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Review – Earthbound Beginnings
Earthbound is an extremely meaningful game to me, so of course it feels right to branch out to the other games in the series. Mother (Earthbound Beginnings) was the first game I ever imported on Famicom. However, whether or not I like it is more complicated than just yes or no.
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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 – Pikmin
Nintendo has maintained a reputation as a company that never releases new properties. The common thought is that they only constantly rehash their staples: Zelda, Mario, and some others that variables that change over time. That’s never been very accurate, and it seems to be a little less repeated these recent years, but to demonstrate how long this belief has…
