D(imension) Force

It has occurred to me that I haven't posted much about SNES games. This is mostly a product of my small SNES collection, so to help rectify this I've decided to write about some random SNES roms. After landing on a few Japanese-only RPGs, which I don't feel qualified enough to get into, I ended up with Dimension Force, which I had never heard of. There doesn't appear to be much of a difference between it and the North American, D-Force. This 1991 shooter was made by Asmik Ace Entertainment, a company that has been around since the NES era, and is still active today, but has never made much of importance. The most notable of their releases to me is the terrible The Ring: Terror's Realm for the Dreamcast.

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.

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.

Illusion of Gaia

It has been a long time since I've played through Illusion of Gaia, so I don't really remember the intricacies of the game, but there are a lot of moments that are very memorable. I am having a hard time judging how well the game is known. It seems that anyone that has played it remembers it well, but I don't think it is as widely known as other similar SNES titles. I have a lot of fond memories of the game, but for some reason I've never went back and replayed it. Illusion of Gaia is just a strange game in a whole lot of ways.

The Exciting Sport of Faceball 2000

Faceball 2000 doesn't feel like a game as much as a tech demo.  It is a port of the Atari ST game, MIDI Maze from Xanth Software F/X.  Unusual for the time, the various ports of the game were done by the original developers and not farmed out to a different developer.  Xanth never really made any other games, so I guess the union of balls and faces was their passion.  Okay, that's enough of the obvious sexual references for the article, so on to explaining the actual game.

Herpy Derpy Hungry Dinosaurs

I was looking for a random SNES game to write about, so I skimmed through a list of games and landed on Hungry Dinosaurs because it had a funny name and I've never heard of it. It was released in Europe under that title, and as Harapeko Bakka in Japan, but was never released in the US. It is a fairly mysterious game to me because I couldn't find much information about it online. All I really know is that it was developed by Magical Company and was published by Sunsoft. I couldn't find out much about Magical Company either, and all I know is they were around for about ten years and started out by porting Fatal Fury to some Japanese home computer. They never made any games I've heard of.

Wolfchild: A Werewolf With Laser Fists

Wolfchild is an action platform game by Core Designs. They are most known as the original developers of the Tomb Raider series, but before that they made games like this and Chuck Rock. It was originally released on the Amiga, but was ported to all the major consoles of the early nineties. The version I played was the one for SNES. It's a pretty unremarkable game mechanically, but it is memorable for the odd core mechanic and hilarious art design.

Vegas Stakes: Classy SNES Gambling

  

When I was a kid and wanted games for the SNES, my parents got me a copy Vegas Stakes, I would guess because they have always been thrifty. I don't recall ever having an interest in gambling, but I did rent Caesar's Palace for Genesis at some point, and I enjoyed that, so I guess it's a gift that makes sense. Apparently this HAL Laboratory game was actually a sequel to an NES game called Vegas Dream, which I had not heard of before today. This game is a bit odd, but it has some interesting features and it is a solid gambling game.

Jurassic Park-athon Part 2: Rampage Edition

This is the 2^nd part of my Jurassic Park-athon, where I plan to play every Jurassic Park game in roughly chronological order. I was trying to come up with a combination word like Chrontendo, but I've got nothing. Anyway, you can find part 1 here. Today I hope to get through all of the games from around the time of the first film.

Radical Psycho Machine Racing

Radical Psycho Machine Racing is one of those games that is more historically interesting than it is fun or interesting to play. I bought RPM Racing because it had a stupid name. I played it for a little bit and decided it was bad and forgot about it until I was looking through my carts for something to write about. The wikipedia page for RPM Racing held my attention for longer than the game did. The game is just an isometric racing game with tank controls like R.C. Pro-Am. The immediate game it reminded me of was Micro Machines for SNES because I guess that was the only tank controls-having racing game I ever played much of, but that was just top-down and not isometric.

Brutal: Paws of Fuckin' Furries

When people think of terrible fighting games of the 16 bit era, their first thought is probably Shaq Fu, but I think that does a disservice the sheer volume of horrid fighters that came out in that era. One such disgrace of a game is Brutal: Paws of Fury. There is no redeeming quality to this trash. I've had the game since I was a kid and I've always hated it. Brutal is a prime example of why creators GameTek deserved to go bankrupt and have their properties locked away in Take 2's vaults, never to be seen again.

Story Time: Uniracers

There is a lot I could say about Uniracers. It's a really strange game, and there are a lot of really strange stories to be told around it, let alone just transcribing the experience of playing it. Uniracers, Unirally in other parts of the world, has the distinction of being the last game developed by DMA Designs before they created the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto series. Before they were Rockstar North, DMA Designs made weird shit like this game about sentient unicycles racing, for which they were sued by Pixar. I guess Pixar had made some animation in the 80s that starred some sort of animated unicycle, so in spite of having good initial sales, being critically well-received, and being a pretty fun game, Uniracers' initial production run was the only one it got.

America Was A Scary Place In the 90's: Rival Turf!

Rival Turf is a by-the-books Final Fight knockoff. There is nothing remarkable about the game in any way except maybe the radical cover design. Part of me really wished the whole game were like that goofy cover, just for novelty's sake, but the name Jaleco is right there on the cart, so it's not like my hopes were that high. I mean, Jaleco has been around for a really long time, but I don't think they've ever made a game I gave a shit about.

The Ultimate Canine Caper!

I bought Beethoven's 2^nd specifically for a Poverty Game Night party because how could a game based on a sequel to a horrible movie not be atrocious? So, I played it at the party and found out that it was, in fact, a piece of shit. The SNES cart was worth more to me in plastic and silicon. When I sat down to write this article, I thought, “Fuck, I don't want to actually play this shit again.” Instead of going on my instincts and just running away, I did the opposite of what logic dictated, and told myself that I would instead beat the game, with the help of some game genie codes of course.