Let's take a minute to go back in time to 1986. Nintendo was basking in the success of their NES console with hits like Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, and The Legend of Zelda. Meanwhile, Sega wanted to prove that the Master System was the better entertainment medium of choice. Attempting to go toe to toe with Mario, they created Alex Kidd in Miracle World. For Master System fans, the release of this game was a day to remember. According to them, it was the dawn of a new era. According to some, Mario had met his match, and Nintendo would soon crumble under Sega's mighty fist. But reality had other plans.
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up for the latest theme park attraction! It’s a theme park based around Mr. Driller, and it’s all underground! Sounds safe enough, right? Anyway, Mr. Driller Drill Land was an awesome GameCube title, but it only stayed in Japan. But now you can download it on Nintendo Switch in the US! Finally! Each attraction represents a game mode in this theme park, and I’m going to take you on a tour of all of them! So let’s begin!
My earliest years in gaming was a magical time. Every new game I discovered pioneered a fresh mechanic I hadn’t seen before. I'll never forget the moment when my brother's best friend came over with his NES games to show off Blaster Master. I marveled as the story elements unfolded while melancholic music played in the attract mode. Pressing the start button then transitioned me to the opening shot of an armored vehicle speeding off while the triumphant music swelled to a crescendo as I journeyed into the unknown. Never had I witnessed anything like that at the time. While everything I just described is nothing spectacular these days, Blaster Master still has a few gameplay elements that still hold up quite nicely.
A giant mashup of everything I played the other day becomes another great game. Read to play.
Today I played a bunch of Peggle Nights, Gears 5 Hoard mode, a touch of Batman Arkham Knight and just a skosh of Kingdom Hearts III - like a desert on a four course meal.
I have a few questions for you. Do you consider yourself to be masochistic in your choice of games to play? Are you driven by a need to show your superiority over other players and scoff at them for not “getting good”? Has your quest for harder and harder games desensitized you to the point that it’s impossible for you to enjoy anything that isn’t actively trying to frustrate you? Well, you’re in luck, because have I got the game for you! Enter: Valfaris, a game so focused on punishing players that it forgets to be fun. Which, if you answered yes to the above questions should get you absolutely psyched, right?
Yes, I'm now playing the unenhanced 360 version of B2 on my XBO after beating the Handoms Collection version to 100%. Why? Because I left about 10 achievements unfinished from way back in 2014, when I last played it. My progress has been slow because these achievements are labor intensive. I've been having fun with it and also having serious frustrations and fatigue.
Welcome to another stellar edition of Nerds Without Pants! Gonna be some abridged show notes this week, as typing this is literally causing Julian physical pain, so let’s hop right in!
My earliest memory of Qix began sometime in the mid-90s when I saw it listed in a Funcoland price sheet (remember those?) and thought it was pronounced “quicks”. As a kid, I thought it was a rule that all words spelled with a “Q” had to be pronounced with the qu inflection. But years of expanded vocabulary eventually proved me wrong. In short, the game’s title is pronounced “kicks”- because I suppose the developer Taito wanted you to get your kicks playing Qix. See what they did there?
I get excited to get a bunch of new books and see what's coming in the theaters and in gaming for the coming month. I make a list and try and do it all. Here's what I'm focusing on for May.
Hey folks, I just wanted to post this blog to let you know that I won’t be writing any more game reviews. APRIL FOOLS! This blog is the total opposite of that! It’s more reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it.
There are a few things that may be happening with VVVVVV (just beat) and Cuphead:
There’s a new fighting game starring all sorts of video game characters, and no it’s not Smash Bros. If you were upset that Shovel Knight is just an assist trophy in the new Smash, well this may be the game for you. Blade Strangers is a 2-D one-on-one fighter featuring characters from games like Shovel Knight, Code of Princess, Cave Story, The Binding of Isaac, and Umihara Kawase. Since the characters are interesting enough, here’s a blog about them!
I noticed something about my latest list of games I’ve reviewed lately at GamerDad.com. Two of them feature ninjas, so we’ll bookend them here. Like always, please click on the links and read as many reviews as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. And speaking of ninjas, tell me your favorite video game ninjas. Mine would probably be the Ninjis from Mario games, I-Ninja from a forgotten Namco platformer from the GameCube era, Ebisumaru from Goemon, and Taki from Soul Calibur. Not sure why I like Taki, though. She’s just cool I guess. Anyway, here are the reviews!
Reflecting on what I played this week as I wait to see Hotel Transylvania 3 [posting this later. Already saw the movie. It was good. I love seeing old SNL comics doing the voices like Adam Sandler, Molly Shannon and David Spade]. I hit the retro first with PlayStation games. Later I'll mention catching up in the Banner Saga series and then getting sidetracked by Bomber Crew while waiting for Banner Saga 2 to install.
So as most of you have probably heard by now, I’ll be going to E3 after a five-year long hiatus. I’ve been going to E3 since 1997, and while I did skip a couple of years here and there, it was by my own choice for the most part. But the past five years I didn’t get approved for a media pass because they said the site I write for was too small. But I kept applying each year anyway and to my surprise, this year I was approved! I don’t know what changed, but hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, right? So we’ll see if E3 is still better than PAX. Oh yeah, speaking of, since I am going to E3, I won’t be going to PAX West this year in August. Mainly because I don’t have enough vacation time plus it’s really hard to take off around Labor Day where I work. I will post my E3 coverage over at GamerDad.com when I get back, so please be sure to check that out after the show. But in the meantime, here are some game reviews I’ve posted lately there. Please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe even post a like or comment or two. I’d really appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
I'm still playing Rise of the Tomb Raider. I died a new way: spikes. Sometimes there be pits with spikes. I didn't let that Bobcat get me though, or was it some kind of tiger? I don't know but I'm probably near the end of the story.
I was playing 1981 games on Midway Arcade Origins, backwards compatible Xbox 360 game on Xbox One, when I discovered Satan's Hollow listed as '81. No matter that wikipedia says '82, I'm going with what the collection says. So I played it and thought it was good.
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.
When the NES Classic hit store shelves it was all the rage. Comprising of 30 games, there were quite a lot of games as well as classic titles that made it. Of course with a system that has about 900 titles, not all of them made it onto the system and not all of them are winners. So I figured I'd try and highlight some notable classics and some maybe not so notable crap. And since I have just about every title...we might s well give it a whirl. Let's go!
Who isn't though? I have this conundrum a lot. I don't like reading self promotion blogs, and I hate writing them even more. I'd rather tell you about all the awesome things other people have made.