WWF Super Wrestlemania: Not The Arcade Game

Okay, I fucked up on this one. I picked up a game called Wrestlemania for the SNES thinking it was the Wrestlemania game I remembered, but boy was I wrong. The game that I remembered, which is really the only 16-bit WWF game worth remembering, was WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, not WWF Super Wrestlemania. There is a big difference, in that the former is a wacky and fun wrestling game, and the latter is a horrible relic of wrestling games' past. I should have remembered the cardinal rule of buying old games: “don't pay money for anything with an LJN logo,” but head was filled with images of hitting people with literal tombstones and Doink the Clown, and I didn't even realized I had thrown away three dollars until it was too late.

The Women That Make Resident Evil Great

At the recent 2011 Tokyo Game Show, Capcom showed off a new trailer for the upcoming Resident Evil Revelations for the 3DS. This trailer puzzled me, not only because this trailer mainly starred a new character, but because this new character, named Rachel, is incredibly incongruous with the way the Resident Evil (video game, not awful movie) series has portrayed women up to this point. I'm not sure if Capcom is aware of it, but up until this point the series has had a great track record of featuring strong, (mostly) non-sexualized female characters, and Rachel appears to be the antithesis of this.

MW3: MechWarrior 3 That Is

As far as deals on poverty games go, my local Goodwill has been a great source of old, cheap PC games, and not just those budget PC games that Target carries, but good, sometimes classic, stuff like Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. At $1.99, I was hard pressed to find a reason to leave MechWarrrior 3 on the shelf. Granted, I've never gotten into the whole BattleTech thing, but I am a fan of various walking tanks and large death-dealing machinery, though the mech designs of the franchise aren't really my style. This 1999 title was developed by Zipper Interactive, the company that went to make Crimson Skies for Xbox and the majority of the SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs titles for various Sony platforms.

Alpha Protocol: Espionage and Beards

Just when I was wondering what game I should write about today, I found out that Steam is selling Alpha Protocol for all of two US dollars. Two bucks for a game that came out a little over a year ago. I recall hearing a lot of mixed opinions on the game when it came out. Not mixed as in there were some people that liked it and others that didn't, but mixed as in there are parts of the game that work and parts that don't. Still, I can't really say no to a two dollar game, even if it is flawed, broken, or terrible, so I consider the possibility of finding any redeeming qualities a plus. As it turns out, the descriptions of the game that I had heard were quite accurate, but the game is definitely worth the my money and time.

Gargoyle's Quest For Recognition

I don’t recall where I first heard about Gargoyle’s Quest, but it is the sort of game that frequently shows up on lists like:  “The 10 Best Game Boy Games You Never Played.”  First off, titles like that bother me because the author had no way of knowing what the readers have or have not played, so it should be called “The 10 Best Underappreciated Game Boy Games” or something like that.  Secondly, I shouldn’t really complain about the article title because it happens to be quite accurate, as it is a great game and I hadn’t played it until recently.  With the release on the 3DS Virtual Console, I figured it was worth four dollars to give it a try. 

The Disposable Nature of Video Games: An Analysis and a Manifesto

One thing that has always bothered me about the culture around games is the obsession with the new and the complete disregard for the old. I'm not stating this as some jaded “retro gamer” that hates how people play Call of Duty instead of Sonic the Hedgehog or whatever, I'm annoyed that anything more than a year old is not considered as important anymore. It just so out of sync with how people consume every other type of media. So, why is it that people see only the latest games as worth their time and everything else as disposable?

Robotek HD and webOS Gaming

After the complete clusterfuck of mistakes that HP made with the Touchpad, I got one at 99 dollars, which makes it one of the mospoverty tablets on the market. Sure, at that price point it is quite nice, and it does the standard smartphone/tablet stuff well, but this is a site about games, and in that department it is predictably lacking. Outside of Angry Birds, which comes pre-installed, there just isn't much available. One game that is available, and thankfully free, is Robotek HD by Hexage, a company that makes games for every major and minor OS.

Ancient Aliens: Mushroom Kingdom

As a part of the nostalgic memories of many people's lives, Super Mario Bros. is rarely looked at with a critical eye. The problem is, upon closer inspection, much of the game just does not add up. How did all these worlds get here? Who is Mario and what are his goals? There are a great deal of unanswered questions that Mario historians have not been able to answer. These historians have rejected the facts right in front of them because they are unable to accept these facts without compromising their established world view. I believe that many of the mysteries of Mario's worlds can be explained by the intervention of aliens in the past.

A Brief Look At Gundam Games

Video games based on Gundam have a terrible reputation, and it while it is not entirely undeserved, there are a great deal that goes completely overlooked. There are a lot of games that are awful, a lot that might be good for fans of certain genres, and some that are incredibly satisfying for fans of the series. As a fan of the franchise, I can understand how readers may not consider me a reliable source, but there are good Gundam games, and it bothers me that people seem to completely dismiss any game with the Gundam on it. This is by no means a complete guide, but I think it covers a good deal of important titles.

Shining Some Light On Boktai

If I had to choose the most unique or most insane GBA game, I would likely cast my vote for Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands, the Konami game that is built around the use of a light sensor. Leave it up to Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear, to come up with some really bizarre game ideas. I suppose if the man behind one of their most successful franchises tells them to buy a bunch of light sensors because he has an idea for a game, then Konami is not likely to tell him no. Whatever the case, I am glad it got made because it is a really interesting game.

Mighty Bomb Jack: From The Dark Early NES Days

Mighty Bomb Jack is an NES sequel to Tecmo's first game, Bomb Jack. Released in 1986, it is a game from a transitional period in the NES's history from arcade-style games to more modern console era games. I don't know if Jack is supposed to have been a mascot for Tecmo, but the character has a bizarre design that is a mix between a superhero and cereal mascot. In a lot of ways the game straddles the line between those to styles, and the result is a game that is mostly just frustrating and annoying.

Dear Natalya: Nobody Likes You

Seriously, nobody at all. You are not just an encumbrance, you are a hindrance to fun. Obviously, you were a pain in GoldenEye 007 for N64, but you really didn't add much to the movie either. I mean, the movie had so many characters with Trevelyan, Boris, and Xenia, so what did you really add to it? You're just some boring Russian girl, and you weren't actually Russian because you were played by a Polish woman. You're a Bond girl, but you aren't that hot. You are like a frumpier Scully from the X-Files. Maybe you were a good role model to geeky girls that are into computers, which is rare for a Bond film, but you were probably also a role model to bitchy women.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero +Deleted Scenes

The development history of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is pretty strange and confusing, and possibly as a result the game is kind of a mess. Sure, at it's heart it is still Counter-Strike 1.6, which is a solid, though dated, competitive FPS. Throughout its four years in development Rogue Entertainment, Valve Software, Gearbox Software, Ritual Entertainment, and Turtle Rock Studios all worked on the game. Considering that, it is not surprising that the game ended up the way it is.

Maximum Carnage: Listen All You Fools

I think there are a lot of people my age out there who have fond memories Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage from Software Creations. It is something I don't think anyone who grew up after the 90's comic book collector's bubble burst would quite understand. It's a Spider-Man game that also has Venom as a playable character, it has a bunch cameos of other Marvel characters, and the big boss is the crazy serial killer Carnage, whom all the kids loved at the time. On top of all that, it had music from Green Jellÿ, and in retrospect that is really the only good thing about it.

Newsflash: Deep Labyrinth Found To Contain Many Subterranean Levels

I bought Deep Labyrinth because it was a five dollar DS game that wasn't some licensed crap or Imagine: Baby Surgeriez or whatever all that DS shovelware was. It may be a very generic game, but it still somehow has the second-most generic name for a dungeon crawler on the DS, losing out to Hudson's Dungeon Explorer. Deep Labyrinth was made by a company known as Interactive Brains, which mostly makes games for Japanese cell phones, so it does not come as a huge surprise to find out it is actually a port of a cell phone game.