Gaming off the Beaten Path

  Mascot platformers were really popular in the 90's and 00's. I'm not sure any other genre or sub-genre stayed so popular for so long. Tournament fighters were huge in the early to mid 90's, RPGs were all the rage in the mid to late 90's, there were like 50 different MMOs in the mid 00's and it seems like there are millions of Soulslike games out there now. But when Mario hit it big in 1985, everyone started trying to replicate his success. Sometimes, they were successful (Sonic). Other times, they weren't (Bubsy). But it seemed like from the mid 80's to the mid 00's, developers were pumping out mascot platformers left and right. I guess the modern FPS craze is getting close, I would say that started in the late 00's and it is still going strong. But they still have a ways to go to catch up to mascot platformers. I think part of the reason mascot platformers were so prevalent for so long was their ability to transition between genres. These game...

  I always felt like the 6th generation was where gaming really started to take off as a mainstream hobby. It's not that a there weren't a lot of people playing video games during the previous two generations, because there were. But it always felt like it was predominately a medium targeted at boys age seven to 17. I didn't realize it at the time, I fit right into that group after all, but games were almost exclusively made for that demographic. It was around the 6th gen where I feel like that began to change. My guess would be that some gaming execs realized there was money being left on the table. "Hey, maybe girls like video games too?" "Our user base is getting older, maybe we should make more titles aimed at adults?" "If we made educational or child friendly games that don't suck, maybe parents will buy them for their kids?" Anyone that's ever sat in a marketing meeting knows exactly what I'm talking about. In this case, it wa...

  It really is amazing how video game series' come and go. On one hand, you have the IPs that cross multiple gaming generations, your Marios , your Final Fantasys , your Sonics , etc. On the other, you have weird, obscure one-off titles like Nano Breaker or Shadow Madness. Sometimes series' seem to drop off the map without warning, like F-Zero or Star Fox. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a series take as strange a path as that of Onimusha. These games were a huge deal in the 6th generation. It gave us four mainline titles, the first of which will be our subject today, as well as a tactics-style game. Onimusha: Warlords, was the first PlayStation 2 game to sell more than a million copies and was eventually ported to the original XBox. It came from a huge studio in Capcom and was designed by Keiji Inafune, a name all too familiar to Mega Man fans. The game actually began development as a 64DD title in the 90's, as the higher ups at Capcom reportedly wanted a Resi...

 Since I started reviewing games almost three years ago, I've found myself playing a lot of stuff I never thought I would touch. But this is a plunge I didn't think I'd ever take.  I have never, ever had even a passing interest in playing any of the Lego games, which have been around since the 6th generation (I think). These games are what they sound like; standard action games featuring Lego versions of the characters from your favorite cannons or universes. There's tons of these, Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, Lego Harry Potter, etc. etc., you get the idea. It's not that I have a problem with that, I loved Legos as a kid and I obviously love video games, but it just never interested me. But you know who it did interest? My almost five-year old. He saw the cover of this game, a PS3 title I'm not sure how I acquired, and insisted in playing right away. He has no idea who Indiana Jones is and honestly, I'm not overly familiar with the films myself, but he thoug...

The Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon Hi Kids!  Today we are going to talk about a very serious topic...drugs. It’s no secret that drugs are bad for you.  They are illegal, unhealthy and expensive.  Of course, that isn’t going to stop people from using them, but just because someone else does something doesn’t mean you should too.  Even if they can make you see or feel something completely out of the realm of ordinary, the long and short term effects can be devastating.   Besides, there are plenty of ways to experience what its like to be high/tripping/rolling/etc. without risking your health.  One of those is to play “The Mystical Ninja.”  The best way I can imagine this game’s development is that a team of folks at Konami hacked the source code of Super Mario 64, ingested one or more types of some unknown illicit substance, watched a documentary about Japanese culture and made a video game. And, despite all of its technical fl...