Section Z is another Capcom game whose NES adaptation is probably more well known than the 1985 arcade original, similar to what happened with Bionic Commando. Unlike that game, however, Section Z's arcade version is still quite playable and fun. You play an astronaut with a jet pack and gun that's infiltrating an alien bio horror space station...or something. The important part is that you fly around shooting stuff. Section Z seems like a typical side scrolling shooter at first but then you realize you can change the direction your character is facing (left or right) with the push of a button. It's simpler than Forgotten Worlds but still makes the fire fights more interesting. Then you hit a lateral dead end and start ascending a shaft vertically. These vertical sections are tough because you can still only shoot left or right. Then you reach the top and go left (instead of genre-standard RIGHT) before descending again. These changes help keep things interesting and provide a satisfying sense of progress. Speaking of which, the game starts at Section A and proceeds all the way through the alphabet to Section Z, but these all bleed from one into the next. There are no levels breaks, which is a nice little immersion booster. The only exception is when you fight a boss every five or six sections (all the bosses I fought were sadly underwhelming). The game congratulates you and tells you what section you're heading into with on screen text. Otherwise it's just you and the hostile aliens.
Hidden gems are more often hidden for a reason. As I stated yesterday when talking about Klonoa for the Wonderswan, there are many terrific games that didn't see a western release. So yet again, I am going to discuss another game that wasn't released outside of Japan. This title is is Radia Senki: Reimeihen (AKA: Chronicle of the Radia War) for the Nintendo Famicom.
MadWorld is one I played at this CA's (what SFASU called RAs in dorms) room. It was brutally violent, in cel-shaded black & white and featured really satisfying finishers using the motion controls. This is one of those games that might have driven me to get a Wii if I'd had the money.
The Warp Hive is still being refueled with power pupae from the alien bee queen, so I'll just reminisce about Intellivision's PGA Golf.
So I have been busy applying for more jobs.
So I figured to mix it up some id share some of my current game collections. Today we shall start with Switch.
Hello Pixlpeeps! For this week I thought I would try something fun and somewhat easy for me because I won't have to type. This week's theme is Story In Pictures and every day I will try and do something but only tell the story using pictures. Sounds like fun? I hope it does, so let's get started with a President's Day purchase I made earlier so I wouldn't have to open the other one I bought.
Having an emulator has its perks. Some of the great games you can sometimes play are those that never get released over on North American shores. One such game I managed to finally get to play is of such distinction. Not only is it a hidden gem, but it was also released on a handheld console never released in America. Today I'm talking about Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum (AKA- Klonoa of the Wind: Moonlight Museum) for the Wonderswan!
I've managed to get a little gaming in over the last few days because this was a long weekend in Canada and my friend who manages a local EB Games talked me into buying the Secret of Mana remake on Friday.
Fishing Derby is another Activision game for the Atari 2600 that I played on Activision Anthology for PS2.
In 2006, the Wii came out and I ... really wished they'd have stuck with the much cooler-sounding-to-16-year-old-me Revolution, but really wanted Nintendo to succeed, and thought the motion controls were super cool.
I've got to give it to Quiz & Dragons, a 1992 arcade game. I've never played an RPG quiz board game! Well, okay, the RPG aspects are really light. It has a generic fantasy setting and each of the characters (barbarian, wizard, amazon warrior, and ninja) have a special ability that will randomly come into play. There is no leveling or stats or anything like that. The board game is pretty superficial as well. A big digital die determines how many spaces you move and while there are a few branching paths, it's mostly just a series of trivia fights. That's the game, basically. Each enemy requires a certain number of correct answers to defeat and your character loses a life with each wrong answer. While the stages do change aesthetically, the fights are all the same, even for the bosses. The questions really date the game too. While I did very well on the history and science questions (and merely okay on the plethora of United States trivia lol), the '70s and '80s minutiae killed me. Who starred in this TV show, who won that Oscar, what team drafted so and so. My gosh, SO MANY baseball questions!
This is Skiing for the Atari 2600, made by its first third-party developer Activision. Over the years I've become a bigger and bigger fan of the first generation of Activision developers. I think their game design for the Atari 2600 is perfectly suited to that machine. The graphics are simple and colorful, the gameplay very accessible and easy to understand, and the games are just darn fun, even today. I have seriously considered collecting a complete Activision collection for the Atari for those reasons. Skiiing is one of the earliest examples of this.
In which the Warp Hive breaks and I have to stay in boring old 2018. Thankfully I have a PS2 and Taito Legends 2 to play with.
Well today wasnt a bad day at all but then out of no where tonight my ear and mouth started hurting. Im hoping its just some random pain and goes away soon. Its not horrible or terrible, just more a nuisance. So tonight my blog shall be short. I got Fe and Bayonetta today. I havent played either yet but I think Im gonna jump on Fe first. I doubt its a super long game.
Mega Twins, released in arcades in 1990, is a beautiful game. It would have looked right at home on the SNES, and that was still a year out from release (in America at least). This action platformer sees two brothers—the sons of the king—defend their land from invading monsters. And what adorable monsters they are! The whole game is colorful and cheery and filled with little visual touches and comic moments. One of the later bosses, for instance, is a vampire but underneath his large cloak-like wings he's just a dude in a bow tie and boxers and a funny hat. When he blows up at the end of the fight his boxers go flying off and can land on your head if you jump into them, which totally makes your little guy freak out. It's a completely unnecessary little sequence but adds a ton of personality to the game. The graphics look heavily inspired by Dragon Ball (especially the promo art) but I found no evidence that Akira Toriyama worked on the game, and certainly that would be a major selling point. But whoever was ripping off his style did a good job!
It is Friday and I had a couple of sad looking Fillet O’Fish earlier for lunch because it’s Catholic Friday and it’s no meat day. I’m eyeing some clam chowder for dinner or at worst, some sad fish tacos. Anyways since today is Friday I am going with a Quick Hits today instead of the Versus theme because I couldn’t think of anything to pit against each other, and I bought some Hot Wheels over the past 10 days or so, so let’s get started!
Well today isn't going to be too eventful. I planned on discussing some hidden gems, but that can wait until next week. Instead I want to brag today. That's right. After about over 1450 deaths later I am now the number 1 overall speedmaster on Mutant Mudds Super Challenge on the Nintendo Switch!
Wherein I warp to 1980 and the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor to gather the Kryton being vented from reactor 2 after the accident in '79. I wanted to make some Kryptonite to keep Superman in check in 2018, where he is running amok.
In some ways Magic Sword seems like a continuation of the ideas in Black Tiger (which we established earlier is ultimately trash), albeit streamlined for more fun. Magic Sword is a sword and sorcery fantasy adventure that sees your heroes ascending an eldritch tower to destroy the Black Orb, the ultimate evil artifact which will allow the dark lord Drokmar to rule the world. That boils down to you beating the crap out of everything, naturally.