Gaming off the Beaten Path

 You can drop this one straight into the "that exists?" file. I'm not going to lie, when this game was first bought to my attention I thought it would be a fan-made game or a hack or something along those lines. But nope, there really was a dodgeball video game for the NES, released in 1989 by a company called Technos. This was apparently an arcade port, I am unsure if the original cabinet ever left Japan, but I highly doubt it. Personally I think the name is a bit confusing, so many SNES games had "Super" in the title, it was weird to see it on an NES game other than Super Mario Bros. But I digress. Super Dodgeball is exactly what it sounds like, a video game where you play dodgeball. There's a one player world cup mode, along with a versus mode and something called bean ball, which can be played with either one or two players. This mode is more like a schoolyard game, with every player out for themselves and able to move freely at any point. The other two

  "This game was soooooo ahead of its time." How many times have we heard that before? Hell, how many times have I said it on here myself? Probably a million or so, give or take. While it's always had its reliance on certain genres, from 2D fighters to mascot platformers to open world adventures, the video game industry has never been afraid of a little innovation. It may not seem like it now, but it's true. And it was especially true during the 3rd console generation: make no mistake about it, the late 80's and early 90's were still very much the wild, wild west. It's not that developers didn't try their best to innovate in the first two generations, but their hands were often tied by extremely limited technology. It's not that they didn't try (and succeed) on the 4th, 5th or even 6th generation consoles, but by that point people were starting to figure out what worked and what didn't in a video game. The NES (and Master System, etc.) were

 Just realized I forgot to post these here, will get started with part 1: And here's part 2:

In case you couldn't tell, I've played a lot of video games in my lifetime. About 10 years ago, I actually listed out every title I'd ever played and it was already well into the thousands. And again, that was 10 years ago. I've seen good and bad, unique and formulaic, inspired and boring, violent and family friendly, and everything in between. My past two years of posts have been a pretty good microcosm of the industry really, there have been a few stinkers, mostly okay to good games and a few true standouts. I've discussed my love for games like Doom, Street Fighter, Madden and Final Fantasy VII and how they kept me hooked on the medium throughout my years. But as important as they were in my gaming journey, it all started with Mega Man 3. It wasn't the first game I ever played, I remember being as young as 4 and playing Super Mario Bros at a friend's house. My cousin had an NES and I remember us both getting very frustrated that we couldn't beat any o