Gaming off the Beaten Path

  For some of us, video games are like comfort food. You know it's bad for you, but something about it just makes you happy. For a lot of people that grew up with a Genesis, Altered Beast seems to be one of those games. Originally released as an arcade game in 1988, Altered Beast eventually became a pack in game with Sega's new 16-bit console. It was ported to dozens of other consoles and computers as well, but for today, we are discussing the Genesis version. It's the one I played and the one I am most familiar with. I wasn't really a Sega kid growing up, but most people that were would always bring up this game as one they felt some affinity for. Today, it's looked at with a lot of fondness and nostalgia by those that played it when it first came out. At the same time, even those that are nostalgic for the title recognize that it isn't actually that great. Even with all the nostalgia surrounding it, most Genesis fans recognize its not in the same category as S

It's recently come to my attention that this month marks Sonic the Hedgehog's 30th anniversary. Really makes you feel old. It's been a while since I covered Sonic, about two years at this point. The excellent Sonic Mania will go down in the annals of history as the inaugural winner of the "GOTBP Game of the Year" award. Who knows, maybe one day said award will actually mean something. Anyway, I do feel like sometimes I stray a little too far from my whole schtick of "playing forgotten games," especially when it comes to dealing with household names like Sonic. At the same time, it's also nice to revisit some more known commodities after coming across some of the junk that I get stuck playing. I toyed with the idea of doing a series retrospective or playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis, but then I remembered Sonic Spinball existed. Sure it's still Sonic, but its certainly not a mainline title in the series. Sonic Spinball, relea

Lets talk about failure. At some point, everyone is going to fail at something. Aint none of us perfect, right?  However, not all failure is created equal. Sometimes people fail because they don't work hard enough, or they don't think things through or they are working with an idea that's doomed from the start. But that isn't always the case. Sometimes failure comes from pushing too hard, being too visionary or trying to make something from nothing. I'm not sure if any entity in video game history failed more in the latter manners than Sega. Yes, there's a reason Sega doesn't make consoles anymore. But its because they pushed the boundaries too far, not because they didn't do enough. The Saturn and Dreamcast were absolute beasts of consoles, but they were expensive and allegedly difficult to develop for. Remember Sega Channel? That was the PlayStation Store before the PlayStation Store was a thought in Sony's mind. Sega was pumping digital only gamin

The late 80's/early 90's were a very, very interesting period in gaming history. I've briefly touched on this before, but the medium was very much evolving and found itself at a crossroads at this time. Better technology, better graphics and better storage led to more unique and ambitious games. The days of almost all games consisting of "shoot stuff, get points" were drawing to a close and developers were starting to try new and unique things with console games. A lot of this stuff, like deep storytelling and more adventure oriented gameplay, was more common on PCs, but for home consoles it was new ground. It's through this lens that we look at Fatal Labyrinth, released for the Genesis in late 1990 in Japan before making its way to the west in early 1991. It features elements of a lot of different genres, but would generally be classified as an RPG. But if it came out today, it would almost certainly be classified as a "roguelike." That term wasn

It's time to talk about what may be the clone-iest of the Street Fighter Clones.  Released by Data East in 1993 and ported to the SNES the next year, Fighter's History is the first in a series of games from the early 90's. I can't say I've ever played the others, the second game was only ever released on the Neo Geo CD and the third game never left Japan. Honestly, it would probably be easier and cheaper to fly to Japan to pick up a copy of the third game than it would to find a working Neo Geo CD and a copy of the second. But the first game was relatively easy to acquire and became infamous for taking fighting games to a place they'd never been before...the courtroom. You see, I'm not the only one that who considers Fighter's History to be the most egregious Street Fighter ripoff. Capcom thought so too. They sued Data East for copyright infringement, claiming they had ripped everything from their characters to their combat straight from their more popul

I've decided to do something a little bit different this week. Rather than focus on one single game, I'm going to rope a few relatively similar licensed Street Fighter clones into one post. This was a very popular route to take back then and it makes sense. Fighting games were popular and so were these franchises, so, easy money right? These games are all certainly SFII clones, but do they have any similarities beyond that? Let's take a look. Double Dragon 5: The Shadow Falls So, let's start out with another member of the "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game" club.  DD5 is based on the Double Dragon animated series, which was based on the series of beat'em up games for the NES. If you're still following, that makes it a video game based on a TV show based on a video game. Weird. They could have very easily just slapped characters from the show into another beat'em up and called it a day, but at least they tried something different...right? Yeah, Tr

Here's another one from the Joey file. He has been obssesed, like OBSSESED with Toy Story for the past few months.  And not just the first movie either.  I have probably seen all four of the Toy Story films ten times a week for the past several months.  I guess it could be worse.  There are a lot of lousy kids shows and movies out there that have no redeeming qualities for parents so at least I'm not watching those over and over again. It says a lot for these movies, at least the first two, that the mere mention of them doesn't make me cringe at this point.  I think almost everyone would agree, the original Toy Story is a classic.  Computer-animated films are almost guaranteed money now, but Pixar took a huge risk when they released it in 1995.  The risk paid off 1000-fold.  Pixar is now a household name and movies like this are everywhere.  That all started with Toy Story, which was the first fully computer animated feature film.  The second wasn't revolutionary by any

 It's time to go back to the Sega Genesis well once again. No, I'm not confused, you are.  Yes, I'm sure its a Genesis game.  Just because Nintendo insisted on including the word "Super" in just about every SNES title doesn't mean Sega was contractually forbidden from using the word.  Besides, Super Thunder Blade came out before the SNES even existed. It was a launch title for the Genesis (or Mega Drive, depending on where you're from) when it came out in 1988 in Japan and would make its way to the U.S., also as a launch title, about a year later. Like so, so many of the SNES "Supers,"  Super Thunder Blade is a sorta-sequel to the arcade game Thunder Blade.  Sega added the Super to differentiate it from a similar port to its 8-bit Master System.  Yeah, weird, who knew Nintendo ripped that genius idea off of its hated rival?  The game is a 3rd person flying game, putting you in the cockpit of an attack helicopter as you attempt to shoot down as ma

Titles are hard. I've always hated naming things I write, whether it was headlines for news articles or titles for meeting notes at work.  I'm not going to say I'm bad at it, but I find it very frustrating.  It's one of those things that people don't realize is a major ask of creatives/copywriters/etc. With that in mind, it won't come as a surprise that I am going to give Sega a pass for giving this week's entry a confusing name.  It could just be me, but the first thing I thought of when I heard the title "Gain Ground" was a football game.  That was about as far off as I could have gotten.  Released in arcades in 1988, Gain Ground was intended as Sega's answer to Gauntlet.  While the aesthetic may be similar, I don't think they got particularly close to aping Nintendo's popular fantasy game.  They did, however, create a unique and interesting blend of top down action and single screen puzzle games.  Think Bomberman meets Smash TV.

It’s back to the Sega Genesis this week.  What can I say, I ignored it for too long, even in my younger years. It’s no secret that the Super Nintendo was regarded as a haven for great RPGs while the Genesis was widely considered a wasteland for the genre.  But was that really the case?  The first part was certainly true.  There are dozens of really good to great RPGs for the SNES, especially if you include Super Famicom games.  But was it really that much better than the Genesis’ RPG library? Honestly, yes.  But that doesn’t mean the Genesis was the RPG wasteland it was made out to be.  It had a number of solid entries in the genre, mostly from its two main RPG series’.  I already discussed the amazing Phantasy Star IV, a game I never realized was as classic as it was.  That inspired me to look into Sega’s other oft discussed RPG series: Shining Force. Released in 1993, Shining Force was actually the second game in the series, a follow-up to Shining in the Darkness a few years ea

It seems like just about every game gets at least one sequel, no matter how lousy it is or how poorly it sells. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a direct sequel, hell sometimes it can even be a prequel, just a second game in the series. I am wracking my brain for a single one.  Well, other than this week’s entry, of course. Nano Breaker is an action game released for the PS2 in the early aughts.  It’s a Konami game, so its not like it came out of a small studio that closed down or anything like that.  It didn’t get the best reviews or anything but again, gaming is such a sequel happy medium that it is a tad surprising the IP was just abandoned.  There were certainly a lot of interesting elements presented here, so why not give it another shot?   Before we get into that, let’s discuss the gameplay a bit.  One of the first games I reviewed on GOTBP was “Castlevania: Lament of Innocnence,” another Konami title.  It took about two seconds of playing Nan