Fuck Mountain King

In celebration of Halloween, it only makes sense to make an entry for the first game that ever scared the shit out of me. As an Atari 2600 game, I can't imagine anybody can find the game particularly horrific these days, but, as a kid, Mountain King made me uneasy. I don't know if CBS Electronics, the subdivision of a toy company that just wanted in on some of that Atari money, intended to make the game scary to kids, but that was the way things turned out.

Ariel: The LIttle Mermaid

I imagine there are at least a few people out there that are fond of The Little Mermaid for the NES. It is a Capcom game for NES, after all. But that is not what this post is about, it is about 1992's Ariel: The Little Mermaid for the Genesis, which was most definitely not made by Capcom. Actually, it was made by a company known as Bluesky Software, whom aren't responsible for many games, but did make Jurassic Park:Rampage Edition. While I kind of like Rampage Edition because it was pretty much an insane expansion pack to the first Genesis Jurassic Park, they apparently aren't that great at making their own good game from the ground up.

Dragon Quest IX At Goodwill?!

There is a certain sort of game that one expects to find when trolling Goodwill. That's not to say that I never expect to find good games there, but it usually more offbeat or older stuff. A good example of the sort of stuff I've bought from Good Will is the PC version of NBA Hangtime, which is a fun game, but it is pretty old and I wasn't even aware there was a PC version. I never expect to see newer games, with the exception of abject failures like Tony Hawk Shred, so I was quite surprised to see two basically new copies of last year's Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. It may not have been the highest selling game, but it did pretty well for a Dragon Quest game in the US.

Ghostbusters: The Old Good One

Ghostbusters is a franchise that has always had a pretty shaky history when it comes to video game adaptations. This probably stems from the fact that the series started in the early eighties, and there wasn't much developers could do to make a good game based on the series for primitive systems like the Atari 2600. Even though the NES or Master System could theoretically host a good Ghostbusters game, they didn't because the games were based upon earlier versions. Thankfully, when Compile developed Ghostbusters for the Sega Genesis they started from scratch and ended up making a fun game.

The WonderSwan and Wonder Classic

I'm hardly definitive source of information on the WonderSwan series of handheld game consoles, seeing as I'm not Japanese, but I do consider myself to be something of a portable system connoisseur, so I recently made a point to track one down. I guess I'll start with a history lesson. In the late 90's the Game Boy was nearly ten years old and while the refinements of the Game Boy Pocket was nice, the improvements of the Game Boy Color weren't quite impressive enough to revitalize the aging market. There must have been the idea Nintendo wasn't quite as powerful as it had been because multiple companies tried to push devices into the market. Before this point there had been competitors, but they all ended disastrously.

Baby's Day Never Got Out

Some weird stuff just can't be found in stores.  For example, I found this. . . thing while browsing a Genesis rom set.  Now, I don't really remember the Baby's Day Out other than the name, but apparently it was a movie that bombed horribly and spawned a game that was mercifully canceled.  The first name I noticed when starting the game up was Hi Tech Expressions, the publisher that inflicted that Beethoven game upon the world, but it was actually developed by a studio called Designer Software, who's only release was some Mickey Mouse game.

Guardian Heroes: Now Affordable, Still Awesome

Until recently I would have had a hard time justifying putting up an article about Guardian Heroes. Sure, it is an oft overlooked classic game, but the fact it was only released on the Saturn, which is notoriously hard to emulate, and the rarity of the game meant that tracking down a copy of the game could get quite expensive. I consider myself lucky in that, not only do I own a Saturn, but I also have a friend that has owned the game for years. Now that the game has been remastered and released on Xbox Live Arcade for a measly ten dollars, I won't feel guilty about writing about the game for this site, and I no longer have to organize meetings at my house just to show off the game.