Gaming off the Beaten Path

  As much as I like sports games, I'm really not a fan of most of them before the 5th generation. However, I do have my share of exceptions. Of course, Tecmo Super Bowl is awesome. I don't really consider them true sports games, but I guess Punchout and Super Punchout are boxing titles. Exceptions like that are why I don't really like to make generalizations. But then again, those generalizations have to come from somewhere. It's a weird dichotomy. And fortunately, we don't have to explore it any further, because this week I want to talk about another, almost universal exception to this generalization, arcade style sports games. Maybe it's because they make absolutely no attempt to mimic actual sports at all, but I've always loved old school arcade sports games. NBA Jam is the first one that jumps to mind for a lot of people. I'm not a huge basketball fan...but I absolutely love NBA Jam. What other game allows you to have Hillary Clinton do a 360 flip du

  The end of a console's life cycle was always a weird and interesting time. People talk all the time about how much innovation there is at the start of a new generation, but they rarely talk about how much innovation occurs at the end of one. Sometimes you are better off sticking with the best of what old technology can provide rather than the worst of what new technology offers. I think that's something that goes beyond just gaming and extends to most different kinds of media, or even hardware, but that's a different discussion for a different day. A lot of underrated, forgotten (and expensive) games come late in life cycles, most gamers just move on to the next generation without a second thought. By the end of 1995, everyone wanted to play with the shiny new toys, the PlayStation and the Saturn. Those games had some interesting and outstanding early titles, but the 4th generation consoles weren't ready to go quietly. There were a lot of notable titles that came out

Making a good sequel is easier said than done. For all the good that can come from change, a lot of bad can come from it too. And sometimes being more ambitious leads to bigger pitfalls that simpler games just don't have to contend with. Illusion of Gaia isn't a true sequel to Soul Blazer, which I looked at earlier in the year, but it is the second title in what's come to be known as the Quintet Trilogy. I talked at length about my experience (or lack thereof) with these games and the story behind them already. To summarize, they were a series of action RPGs developed by Quintet and published by Enix in the 90s. Illusion of Gaia was released in the West in 1994, two years after Soul Blazer. It was by far the most readily available of the trio, Soul Blazer was hard to find near me and Terranigma wasn't even released in the U.S. But Illusion of Gaia was available for rent just about every week at all of my local video stores, so it still shocks me that I had never played

  It seems like every series, even the most popular ones, has at least one title that kind of falls through the cracks. You'd be hard pressed to find a lifelong gamer who has never heard of Double Dragon, maybe someone younger as the series' heyday was way back in the 3rd generation. The first three games are considered NES classics, even though the third is considered a bit of a step down and often the butt of jokes in the online gaming community. The games star the Lee brothers, Billy and Jimmy (or is it Bimmy?) as they take on the evil Black Warrior (a translation error later corrected to Shadow Warrior) gang. It may sound simple on paper, but Double Dragon broke a lot of ground in the beat 'em up genre gameplay and style-wise. It was one of the first genres with continuous scrolling, unique movesets and the ability to take enemy weapons. It featured cutscenes and a much darker atmosphere, drawing inspiration from both Enter the Dragon and Mad Max. I have complained on h

  Contrary to popular belief, Sonic the Hedgehog hasn't always been Sega's mascot. I always forget how much earlier than the SNES that the Genesis was released, or how long it competed directly with the NES. I am a little young to remember the true early days of the "Genesis does what Ninten-don't" campaign, though it was still around in some form when I was growing up. To people my age, Sonic the Hedgehog is Sega's mascot and always has been. However, that wasn't actually the case. Because before there was everyone's favorite super fast, super blue hedgehog with attitude, there was a derpy little boy name Alex Kidd. Released in 1989, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle is actually the only one of the series' five games to come out on the Genesis. Developed and published by Sega, it was the fourth game in a franchise that dated back to the early days of the Master System, Sega's 3rd generation console. I'm not going to lie, I don't think

  Believe it or not, I actually do have goals. They may be stupid, but they are technically goals.' One of my stated goals this year is to play through the entirety of the Quintet trilogy. You would think I would make my goals stuff like learn a skill or a language or something. Why waste time on a hobby you enjoy, right? Anyway, the Quintet trilogy is a series of highly regarded action RPGs which, for whatever reason, I never got around to playing. That's kind of odd for me, because I played tons of RPGs in the 90's and 00's. I hit most of the main SNES titles, but I missed these three, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma (at least the two games that came out in the U.S., Terranigma was never released here). Some people consider The Granstream Saga, which I played a long time ago, to be the fourth game in the series, but that's not always the case. They always seemed up my alley, but just kind of passed me by. Anyway, the three games in question are not re

  X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse I'm a little bit shocked that it has taken me this long to get to an X-Men game, but here we are. I don't think everyone's favorite team of non-reptilian mutants needs any introduction. The X-Men have been featured in just about every kind of media imaginable, from comic books to Saturday morning cartoons to major movies, the X-Men have been a big deal for a very long time. While most 80's and 90's kids have some familiarity with the cartoon series, and children of the 00's will probably have seen at list one of films, that only scratches the surface of how deep the group's lore goes. Believe me, this iceberg goes deep, you've got alternate universes, pasts, futures, other teams like X-Force and X-Factor, stuff that a hardcore X-Men fan could probably explain to you but is completely over my head. Honestly, I wasn't really a huge fan of the cartoon, I always found it to be an incredibly oppressive and bleak show and it shoc

  Sometimes, a game leaves you speechless. That may seem like praise, but it isn't always. Yeah, sometimes a game can be so good or interesting it's awe inspiring, I remember playing stuff like Final Fantasy VII or the Resident Evil remake for the first time and being stunned. But sometimes, it's the opposite, a game is so unbelievable awful you just don't know what to say, I remember also being stunned the first time I played Rise of the Robots or that game with the moose and being similarly flabbergasted. But it's not all about good and bad, yin and yang, positive and negative. Games can leave you speechless for other reasons, like how unabashedly weird they are. Total Carnage fits squarely into the 'weird' category. One look at Total Carnage, an arcade cabinet from Midway that was ported to the Super NES in 1993, and you think you know exactly what to expect. The box art has two jacked, shirtless dudes spread firing machine guns and the game is called

I don't normally do stuff like this, but it's not often I see so much hype around a game like Chained Echoes. I really like to try and finish games before I say anything about them, but my ex-journalist brain keeps yelling at me that "TIMELINESS IS IMPORTANT" and there is no way I am going to finish this game any time soon. So, I want to strike while the iron is hot and give some initial thoughts on Chained Echoes. For those who are unaware, Chained Echoes is an independently developed, old school style JRPG available on just about every modern gaming device. It was developed over the course of seven years by a single developer. Yes, you heard that right, one developer. From all accounts, developer Matthias Linda was a huge fan of 4th gen RPGs and wanted to create a game similar to iconic titles like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy VI. Not going to lie, it definitely shows. Before I continue, I want to clarify something very important about my reviews

  When you are discussing bad games, you have to understand that there are tiers just like there are with good ones. Just like there's a big difference between an all-time classic like Super Mario World and a good-not-great game like Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, there's a big difference between Rocky and Bulwinkle and The Bouncer. The latter is a game with a handful of redeeming qualities that you could, in theory, play, you just wouldn't actually want to. The former is a barely functioning mess that's mere existence is enough to make a grown man cry. Also like good games, there is a certain level of consensus as to which games are considered terrible. Ask someone "what are the worst games of all time?" and you will surely get some level of variance in your answer. However, there are titles you will definitely here thrown out there more often than not: E.T., Rise of the Robots, BeBe's Kids, Action 52, on and on, etc., etc. Which brings us to to