Gaming off the Beaten Path

Sometimes a game's reputation proceeds it, for better or for worst. And today, we are going to focus on the "worse." I have heard quite a bit about Ballz 3D, a fighting  game released for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis late in the lifecycle of both systems. As we all well know at this point, that can be really good, or really bad. A lot of games released late in a system's lifecycle take full advantage of hardware that developers have had quite a bit of time to figure out. On the other, the end of a console's lifecycle is prime territory for developers dumping half baked, low effort titles onto a console just to say they did. That was especially true of fighting games, which were all the rage at the beginning of the 4th generation but starting to lose favor by the end of it. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Fatal Fury had established the right way to do these games and the days of just slapping a license on top of a random tournament fighter and having it s...

Last year, I jumped head first into the pool Metroidvania titles for the Game Boy Advance. I started with the "Vania," so now it's time to look at the "Metroid" side of things. As with Castlevania, Metroid is a series that needs absolutely no introduction. In some respect, I'm a little surprised that I haven't touched the franchise in the seven years I've been doing this. While it's far from "unknown," I feel like Metroid has a lot of weird, quirky entries that probably would fit the "off the beaten path" theme. These games may not be quite as popular as the bigger Nintendo IPs, but they have some very, very passionate fans that live and die with them. And I hope they don't get too mad at me for saying that Metroid isn't really a favorite franchise of mine. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I've ever played a bad Metroid game. I know  some people hate Other M for the Wii, but I haven't really played th...

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...