Gaming off the Beaten Path

I've probably covered Mega Man more than any other series here on GOTBP. Yet there is still a lot of uncharted territory for the franchise, territory I am going to start exploring this week. For as much time as I have spent on the series, and as important as it is to my history as a gamer, I've never really explored the Game Boy Mega Man titles. As was the style at the time, pretty much any popular NES/SNES/Genesis game got some level of similar handheld release on the Game Boy/Game Gear. Sometimes these were attempts at straight points, others were instances of the same name but a different game, while others had elements of both. For the most part, the Mega Man Game Boy entries fit into the latter category. They were typically released between NES entries, Mega Man II on the Game Boy between 2 and 3 on the NES, and so on. They would contain elements of the two games they appeared between, the aforementioned Mega Man II would contain four bosses from MM 2 on the NES and four f...

  It's time to discuss yet another one of the internet's favorite games. It's not that I hate covering these things, it's that I always worry I'm going to say something that's going to get myself in trouble. I guess I don't have enough followers for that.  Of course, we all know how things can go when you have a difference of opinion with the rest of the internet. All it takes is not liking a game everyone loves to set off a firestorm. That's especially true with some of the more obscure or indie games that tend to have very passionate fanbases. At the same time, I kind of understand some of the backlash to some of these "hot takes." There are so many attention seekers out there that it's hard to tell whether someone genuinely believes these things or whether they are just trolling. Fortunately for me, my opinion on this week's game isn't completely off from what most people seem to think. Unfortunately, it's also one of the fir...

  I'm going to keep going with my tradition of opening the year with an old sports game. But this time, I'm going to go about it a little bit differently. Usually I go with either an old title in a current series or I check out a title from a once prominent sports series that died out. I mean, that was kind of supposed to be the whole point of this thing when I started. But after last year, where I started looking more into titles on obscure consoles, I found myself looking for sports games in other places. While it was somewhat difficult to find more mainline sports titles on these systems, there were certainly plenty of other examples to be found. For better or worse, most of these tend to be more arcade style sports games, they don't really try to accurately simulate the sports they represent. I personally think this tends to lead to better results for older sports titles. It was really hard to reproduce the feel of an actual sport on a 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation co...

 As another year comes to a close, it's time to take a look at the highlights, and lowlights, of 2024. This marks year six of GOTBP, something I still can't believe. I can't lie, I am starting to feel myself slow down a little bit. Some of it is burnout, some of it is age and some of it is just all around busyness. Of course, having the podcast going also adds to the workload. I really like doing it, writing is old hat for me but I feel like I learn something new each time. I'm really trying to increase the quality on that front, I think I've improved a lot from the early episodes but I could always be better.  Speaking of increasing quality, I played a lot of really good games this year. I may not have as many reviews as I typically do, but this might be the highest average scoring year I've ever had. Part of that comes from me focusing a little bit more on genres I actually like playing. Some of it is also due to looking at new consoles, I didn't do too ...

  I think it's pretty obvious I'm a huge nerd, I wouldn't be talking about old video games on the internet if I wasn't. But as nerdy as I am, tabletop games have always been a blind spot for me.  I've talked a little bit about this before, but the Satanic Panic was still very much alive in the 90's. It may have been on its last legs, but it was still there. Violent video games gave the collective outrage mob a second wind, with games like Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and, especially, Doom serving as fresh new targets to sink their claws into. Other more traditional game formats weren't safe either, as Magic: The Gathering also became a punching bag, though I have to admit that was a little more understandable when you try to walk in those folks shoes. Not even Pokemon was safe, especially when the TCG came out and the usual suspects started claiming it was intentionally designed as a gateway drug to get into Magic. We aren't talking about the folks that had...

  I've never been one to be picky with port differences. If I'm being honest, I usually don't even notice them and I typically don't care about small differences as long as the core gameplay remains intact. Sometimes, you can't help but notice the difference. I wouldn't call the 90's the frontier days of gaming, but the landscape wasn't nearly as settled as it was today. Things were starting to get that way, as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis went toe to toe in the console wars, establishing themselves as the two titans of the industry. But as I've talked about a lot recently, they were far from the only consoles out there. I've dedicated quite a bit of time this year learning about and playing games for some more obscure consoles from the era, which has really broadened my horizons when it comes to old school games. I've discovered a lot of interesting stuff and learned a lot about the consoles that kind of fell between the cracks, at le...