Gaming off the Beaten Path

Unfortunately, I just learned a few weeks ago that this game exists. I thought I was done with these two, I really did. I reviewed The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends in year one, and it was one of the few games from the early days that I had expectations for going in. And those expectations were very, very low. Every gaming content creator, big or small, blogger or YouTuber, retro or modern, seems to have "that game" that they absolutely hate. The Angry Video Gamee Nerd infamously despises Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde for the NES, for example. Well for me, Rocky and Bullwinkle for the NES is, was and always will be "that game." Simply put, that game made me realize that videogames could, in fact, suck. I had a lot of "bad" games, but most of them offered something, anything that would make you keep playing. Gaming is always better than not gaming, right? I used to think that way as a kid, at least before I played Rocky and Bullwinkle. I remembe...

As much as I love digging into new console libraries, it can sometimes be challenging to know where to start. I've looked at a few games on the TurboGrafx-16 at this point, and I certainly plan on checking out a few more. But again, there's the question of how to pick which ones to try next. Do I try and stick with the more well renowned titles on the console, or do I try to keep looking at titles that are less well known. Looking at the better games ensures you are giving the console a fair shake. But at the end of the day, my purpose here is to look at forgotten titles and that means going the latter path. So, which is it. Well, I guess I'll do a little bit of both. And besides, you could probably argue every game on the TG16 is "off the beaten path" in the eyes of a North American gamer, at least the ones that aren't ports. I also think that when you are looking at genres that aren't necessarily your favorite, you really want to look at better example...

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 ...

In recent weeks, I've been doing a lot of research into RPGs that never left Japan. I haven't covered a game that never came to the U.S. in quite a while, so I figured now is as good a time as any. There are always going to be games that get stuck in Japan or only get ported to PAL regions, whether its for financial, cultural or other reasons. But during the 5th generation, it was extremely common for games to stay on the mothership, especially when it came to RPGs. Simply put, the genre just wasn't as popular in the west and it was often not worth the time and effort to localize them. I talked a little bit about this with Sweet Home (though that stood zero chance of ever being released here) and Terranigma (which was not released in North America for more business related weirdness), but it still amazes me how many games never made their way to the West and how many of them I had never heard of until much later. When I started GOTBP, I kind of made it a point to not focus ...

I've probably covered Mega Man more than any other series here on GOTBP. Yet there is still a lot of uncharted territory for the franchise, territory I am going to start exploring this week. For as much time as I have spent on the series, and as important as it is to my history as a gamer, I've never really explored the Game Boy Mega Man titles. As was the style at the time, pretty much any popular NES/SNES/Genesis game got some level of similar handheld release on the Game Boy/Game Gear. Sometimes these were attempts at straight points, others were instances of the same name but a different game, while others had elements of both. For the most part, the Mega Man Game Boy entries fit into the latter category. They were typically released between NES entries, Mega Man II on the Game Boy between 2 and 3 on the NES, and so on. They would contain elements of the two games they appeared between, the aforementioned Mega Man II would contain four bosses from MM 2 on the NES and four f...

  I'm going to keep going with my tradition of opening the year with an old sports game. But this time, I'm going to go about it a little bit differently. Usually I go with either an old title in a current series or I check out a title from a once prominent sports series that died out. I mean, that was kind of supposed to be the whole point of this thing when I started. But after last year, where I started looking more into titles on obscure consoles, I found myself looking for sports games in other places. While it was somewhat difficult to find more mainline sports titles on these systems, there were certainly plenty of other examples to be found. For better or worse, most of these tend to be more arcade style sports games, they don't really try to accurately simulate the sports they represent. I personally think this tends to lead to better results for older sports titles. It was really hard to reproduce the feel of an actual sport on a 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation co...

  I think it's pretty obvious I'm a huge nerd, I wouldn't be talking about old video games on the internet if I wasn't. But as nerdy as I am, tabletop games have always been a blind spot for me.  I've talked a little bit about this before, but the Satanic Panic was still very much alive in the 90's. It may have been on its last legs, but it was still there. Violent video games gave the collective outrage mob a second wind, with games like Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and, especially, Doom serving as fresh new targets to sink their claws into. Other more traditional game formats weren't safe either, as Magic: The Gathering also became a punching bag, though I have to admit that was a little more understandable when you try to walk in those folks shoes. Not even Pokemon was safe, especially when the TCG came out and the usual suspects started claiming it was intentionally designed as a gateway drug to get into Magic. We aren't talking about the folks that had...

  I've never been one to be picky with port differences. If I'm being honest, I usually don't even notice them and I typically don't care about small differences as long as the core gameplay remains intact. Sometimes, you can't help but notice the difference. I wouldn't call the 90's the frontier days of gaming, but the landscape wasn't nearly as settled as it was today. Things were starting to get that way, as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis went toe to toe in the console wars, establishing themselves as the two titans of the industry. But as I've talked about a lot recently, they were far from the only consoles out there. I've dedicated quite a bit of time this year learning about and playing games for some more obscure consoles from the era, which has really broadened my horizons when it comes to old school games. I've discovered a lot of interesting stuff and learned a lot about the consoles that kind of fell between the cracks, at le...