In which I am heckled for playing Atari 2600 Golf by Al Czervik during a party on his yacht.
Jumping back to 1988 we have a scrolling shmup called Forgotten Worlds where a couple of military dudes fight the gods...or something? This shmup allows you to rotate your character all the way around and shoot in all directions. Aside from making it possible for bad guys to come from any direction (and they do), the game can also go seamlessly between horizontal and vertical levels. Variety! You can also collect money during the levels to buy new weapons and upgrades. Doing well on the bosses in particular (I think) gives a big zenny bonus (zenny is Capcom's imaginary currency of choice; they still use it in the Monster Hunter games) and this bonus is necessary to get the best weapons and get them powered up. And that seems necessary to do well in the back half of the game. The last couple levels just trounced me and I only got through it because of infinite continues.
Happy Valentine’s Day! I got Valentines for all of you! Game reviews I’ve written recently over at GamerDad.com! Hey, it’s better than nothing, right? Anyway, please click on as many links as you can and maybe even post a comment or two. I’d appreciate it. But first, let’s play a silly Valentine’s Day game!
In which Richard Chamberlain asks me about arcade game Red Baron while on the set of the Shogun miniseries.
Wherein I am questioned at length about my involvement in an Oahu crime syndicate by Magnum, a private investigator, during a game of Battlezone at the King Kamehamela Club.
I've actually been playing a lot of video games lately, if you include mobile games (and I do!). First of all, I quit smoking camels and am rolling Bali Shag, a more natural tobacco without all the crap. I feel better already, and am smoking less and feeling calmer. So while I am still struggling with Writer's Block, I have been spending my time doing some gaming, as I've been more relaxed.
So today was a much better day. I didnt get a lot of sleep but my mom was a lot better and that took some stress off my back. I only have tonight left work wise and then Im off for the next 4 days. Im gonna do my best to relax and make them count. Hopefully by next week I'm renewed and things arent as stressful. I am sorry if Ive come off as a debbie downer in my last blogs. Things have been weighing on me but a new bright week is around the corner and Im gonna try to make it a lot better.
So here I am on Friday night and well I really don’t have anything to write. I reserve Monday and Friday as my regular blog day items and do the BaD stuff during the week but for today’s Quick Hits I have no idea what to write but I should write something because it is Friday and well the Opening Ceremonies are on and I’d like to see the the 100s of athletes that make up Team USA. Instead of doing my usual of Quick Hits I will talk about something else I really don’t collect anymore but I still love and occasionally buy….Jerseys.
Final Fight, one of the pillars of the brawler genre! So influential! Loved by millions! Yada yada yada! The problem with playing Final Fight right after Captain Commando, a sequel of sorts developed two years later, is that you see just how archaic Final Fight is now. While the three playable characters are distinct and do handle differently when playing, you can't double tap to dash, which takes out a huge amount of moment-to-moment variety (not that the ability was "taken out" so much as it hadn't been conceived yet, I assume). The enemy variety is also very low and the game leans much more heavily on cheap hits than Captain Commando did. Locales change up a little but the whole game feels very samey. If Captain Commando was a little slow and stiff, Final Fight is downright plodding. While I can appreciate its historical importance, the original Final Fight is not a game I would suggest going back to as anything more than a historical curiosity.
Was the only game that mattered that year and you can all fight me.
Wherein I am asked by Vangelis, during a conversation about the use of his music in the TV show Cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan, about the arcade game Tempest. [apparently this is a 1981 game but I saw it listed otherwise somewhere, which is why I played it. So I'm talking about it anyway]
The NES and SNES are not the only systems with classic titles on them. In fact Two of it's competitors have their own Classic Consoles. Today we take a look at the Atari Flashback.
Been a while since I posted anything, so thought I'd give an update. I usually try not to play too much at once, but ended up playing four games in total, two for console, two for handheld.
So today was an okay day. My sister had to miss school so I only watched my niece so she could run to the store. My mom is having episodes with vertigo and this morning she had a really bad one. She couldnt go to work so my sister had no way of getting me niece watched since me and her bf both work nights and need to sleep at some point. My mom relieves me at noon so without her our babysitting plans go under. We also dont have much of a back up since we don't know many people we can trust with her that have free time to just help in that tight spot. We dont trust day care centers, there a instant no.
Oh you knew during Stuff Chris Collects this topic would come up and today’s subject is Lego. Yup the little plastic pieces that apparently rival the price of gold on the resell market. Well the story starts out like this: growing up I didn’t have a lot of Lego and I would occasionally get the small sets. Lego really wasn’t a big deal to me so every so often I would get a set but I was mainly focused on GI Joe.
While watching the Eagles parade on TV, I played some Pinball FX3 after not playing it for probably a year or more. Then I wasn't in the mood for an open world game like Agents of Mayhem, but a RPG, so I started the download for Dragon Age Origins and got back to my Necromancer in Diablo III.
With the advent of the new century, so came the Sega Dreamcast, a harbinger of bullshit to come. Me and Gregg moved out of the ghetto in the late 99 and eventually found a home in the Sunset area of San Francisco, near the beach. We were both making good money and could afford to pay out the nose. For that Christmas my parents blessed me with a Dreamcast, and I returned home with it and Sonic Adventure.
With the SNES Classic out on shelves and 21 fantastic games on the classic system, I figured I'd highlight some classics that didn't quite make the cut. So let's talk some classics.
The 1991 brawler Captain Commando manages to be generic and full of personality at the same time. It feels very '80s. The titular character is a cybernetic policeman mercenary...or something? His posse includes a ninja (see? the '80s), an alien wrapped up like a mummy who fights with knives, and a genius two-year-old who built his own mech suit to fight in. The arcade original allowed for four-player co-op, which improves any gaming experience, but the game was still fun solo. The characters are a little stiff but you can attack on the ground and while jumping or push both buttons together to do a character-specific special attack in exchange for a little bit of your health (pretty standard for beat-'em-ups). The characters do feel different to play as and there is a decent variety of mooks to beat up. The levels also vary wildly in theme, which helps the game keep from feeling stale. The bosses tended to be kind of cheap, especially the boss of the game, but I guess Capcom wanted you to keep pumping in those quarters.
