Blast Corps: Not A Crappy Metal Subgenre

It's strange. I had remembered playing Blast Corps back when the N64 was new, but I didn't remember anything about it other than it was about breaking stuff. As it turns out, that was pretty much the whole game. It is one of Rare's earlier N64 titles, and it was mainly made by a small group of young developers in the company. It wasn't a launch title, but it came out early enough in the system's life cycle that it was probably played by most people simple because they were looking for games to play on it. It is a decent game, considering the situation, but it's not a brilliant game either.

I Finally Play Deus Ex

Deus Ex is definitely a unique and interesting game. Developed by Ion Storm and released in 2000, it is a game that was the first to do a lot of things, and was praised for doing them, but has never been properly replicated or built upon. Hopefully the soon-to-be-released Deus Ex: Human Revolution will remedy this. I am not the most qualified person to write about this game. During it's day, I had never even heard of it, and the nearly universal approval of the game had only reached my ears a few years ago. I purchased it during a Steam sale some time ago, but I never got around to it for whatever reason.

Back to Paperboy's Future

Here is some advice that could potentially save you tens of dollars. If you ever see a game with the LJN rainbow logo, especially if it is an NES game, don't buy it. I don't care if it only costs a dollar, chances are really good that the game isn't worth that much. What brings this topic on is the impressively terrible Back to the Future for NES. It was developed by Beam Software, a company that has made a lot of crap, but also a few interesting titles, such as the SNES version of Shadowrun. It doesn't really matter, it was payed for by LJN, and it is based on a movie license, so it clearly has a 0% chance of being any good.

Bubsy: Insert Cat Pun Here

Back in the early nineties there was a race to create the next big mascot character. Publishers saw the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, and they wanted some of that sweet money of children. A lot of companies that didn't need a mascot ended up with one just so they could make a bland platform game based around him, and one of the best examples of this is Accolade's Bubsy. It may have not been that great of a game, but the character of Bubsy the bobcat had enough 'tude to sell a bunch of games and green light a few sequels.

Asteroids: A Color Update For A Classic

There aren't a lot classic arcade games that I can really get into, but I've always kind of liked Asteroids. That must be why I ended up with Asteroids for the Game Boy Color, which no doubt something I got out of a bargain bin at some point. This version of the game was part of a group of remakes for modern systems in the late nineties, all of which were developed by Syrox Developments, whom were also behind the Game Gear version of The Lion King, and not much else.

Things Mega Man Will Leave Off His Résumé

As a child of thrifty parents, my CD collection as a child was pretty weird. For every Soul Asylum album, I also had some weird crap that I got because it was cheap, like this soundtrack for the Mega Man cartoon. Some department store was going out of business and had a bunch of stuff on clearance, so since it had Mega Man on it and it costs three dollars or something, it seemed worth a purchase. Hey, the title theme to the cartoon was a solid example of Saturday morning cartoon music, so how bad could it be? Well, as it turns out that song isn't on the album, and basically everything that is on it is wholly inappropriate.  Throughout this article will be Youtube videos for the songs that I've been able to find on there, so thanks go out to the brave people that have uploaded them.  Please note that any of the videos that actually have anything to do with the cartoon are fan-made.

A Metal Slug Is Advancing On Your Position

I've already written about how impressive it is that SNK was able to condense Metal Slug down into a Neo Geo Pocket Color game in 1999, but since then there have been quite a few portable Metal Slug games. Immediately following Metal Slug 1^st Mission there was 2^nd Mission, also on the Neo Geo Pocket Color, but then the company collapsed and it took a bit for the next to come along. In 2004, Noise Factory, the company best known for Rage of the Dragons and the later Power Instinct games, though they also assisted in developing Metal Slug 4 and 5, made Metal Slug Advance for the Game Boy Advance. This title expanded on the tweaks originally started in the NGPC games.