Gaming off the Beaten Path

These days, I'll take inspiration from wherever I can get it. I'm not a huge fan of social media, but I've found myself really enjoying the community on a platform called Channel 3 in recent weeks. It's a really great group of gamers that seem to have a lot of great discourse on gaming. I also like the gameification features, which focus on generating interaction and discussion. One of my personal favorite parts of C3 are the quests, which provide XP for completing a task or answering a question. It was a quest they offered last week that inspired this week's post. Communitiy members were asked about a game series they want to see return after a long hiatus. Since disucssing series' like that was kind of part of my mission statement when I started GOTBP, I figured I would take it a step further and talk about my top 12 series I want to see make a comeback. Before I get into this, I have to set some ground rules as to what series are eligible for t...

By the late 90's, the fighting game boom that categoized the decade was nearing its end. And while some series' stood the test of time, many others sort of faded away. While 3D fighters were still relatively new fare, 2D fighters had become so common it would make your head spin. Since the success of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat early in the decade, developers everywhere were out to get a piece of the pie. And no company took as many pieces of that pie as SNK. This is far from the first time I've talked about SNK, or even an SNK fighting game. But it is the first time in many year's I've revisited a title from one of their most famous franchises: Fatal Fury. If the title was a little confusing, don't worry, it was to me too. Garou is the Japanese title of Fatal Fury. You know, kind of like how Resident Evil is called Biohazard, or Mega Man is called Rockman. But the confusion goes even further here, because the game was released under both titles in North Am...

Since I've started reviewing games, I've always made it a point to be completely honest and transparent when it comes to my opinions, even if they aren't necessarily popular. Frankly, it rarely, if ever, even comes up. For all of the complaints I hear about mainstream gaming reviews, I feel like they usually get some semblance of close to the mark, or at the very least the same mark I have in my mind. Nine times out of 10, games that are rated highly or poorly deserve the scores they get. Maybe the big guys score a game a 10 when it really deserves a 9, but its some semblance of close.  That's why I don't like using the O word anymore. Because even if I don't like a game quite as much as more mainstream critics, I still typically like it. But even saying that about some games is bound to cause controversy.  That's kind of the spot I find myself in with this week's title, a game I don't think needs any introduction. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's ...