Gaming off the Beaten Path

  It might sound hard to believe, but a lot of us weren't sure what to expect when Super Mario 64 was first announced. At the time, none of us really knew what was going to happen when games made the jump into 3D, especially not us console gamers. What would Mario look like? How would it play? How would it stay true to the structure of the old games? Seriously, there were a lot of questions, even from hardcore Nintendo fanboys. It didn't take long for us to get our answers though. When the Nintendo 64 finally arrived in late 1996, there were only two games available at launch, Super Mario 64 being one of them. And it's the one just about all of us got as soon as we could. Fun fact, my Nintendo 64 is the first thing I ever bought with my own money. I had been doing odd jobs around the house since it was announced and when I fired it up for the first time, my mind was blown. I remember the first time I saw Mario's face in full 3D, I probably spent like 20 minutes just pla

 It's time once again to go back to this past. This time, our destination is 1995, the Los Angeles Convention Center for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3. We are smack in the middle of the bit wars, with Nintendo and Sega's 16-bit consoles, the Super NES and Sega Genesis, are starting to see their powers wane. It was time for the new era of gaming consoles to take shape, with exciting, 32-bit machines on the horizon. This event would see Nintendo showcase the Virtual Boy, and we all know how that turned out. Sega would announce the surprise launch of the Saturn, its long awaited follow-up to the Genesis (or Mega Drive for you Europeans out there). But it was the new kid on the block that would grab the attention. It's hard envision a time when Sony was a new player in the gaming console market, but here they were ready to introduce their first console, the PlayStation. There's a whole story behind its development, I've already talked a littl

  It's amazing how much I've learned from video games over the years. Thanks to Sony, I recently got some practice in prepping for doomsday. I always sort of scoffed at people that hoard important items during the end times, something that seems to have happened a lot in the last year or so. But when Sony announced earlier this year they would shutter the PlayStation Store on the PS3, I started panic buying. You see, the PS3 has tons of "PSOne Classics" for sale that aren't available on the PS4. You have the standard stuff, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, etc. But there are also a ton, and I mean a ton, of rare, expensive JRPGs that can be had for under $10. I love physical media as much as the next person, but at the end of the day experiencing the games is what's really important. Do I want a physical copy of Suikoden II? Yes. Can I afford it for $300? No. But there it is on the PlayStation Store, for the perfectly reasonable price of $9.99. Sony did renege on their

  Fighting games were everywhere in the early 90. I know I complain a lot about open world games and FPS' now, but it was just as bad, if not worse, with tournament fighters in the 90's. You couldn't go to an arcade or a game store and not see what felt like millions of these things. There were a huge amount of these everywhere, and that glut of similar games was due to the impact of two titles we've discussed at length here: Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. These two series' were the cream of the crop when it came to tournament fighters, they were critically and commercially successful and logically, they led to imitators. I already discussed some of the various Street Fighter clones out there and I think the games I covered are a good microcosm of all of them. Some are bad, some are good, some are even great. I kind of wanted to look at some MK clones, but I just don't have access to any and honestly, I'm glad. It seems like developers did a pretty good

Bond.. James Bond Unlike most of my 10's games, I'm not entirely sure where to start with Goldeneye. On one hand, it's a favorite target, possibly THE favorite target, of the "aged poorly" people who absolutely despise this generation of gaming for some unknown reason. It's funny, to me at least, that a good majority of people with this mindset either weren't born or were very young when this game came out. But by the same token, it was such a cultural phenomena and so many people are so nostalgic for it that they are often unable to overlook its flaws or realize that, yes, certain aspects of the game are "dated." I'm going to be honest, if I split hairs and actually ranked my 10's games, Goldeneye would probably finish near the bottom. I wasn't about to go out and say that it was terrible, but I had to really sit back and evaluate whether nostalgia was clouding my opinion of the game before I fired it up again. When it was all said a

Every series seems to have 'that game' that ends up among the ranks of the forgotten. Since I started reviewing games almost two years ago, I have played plenty of forgotten, totally out there titles, the Shadow Madness-es and Nano Breakers and Gain Grounds of the world.  That was to be expected.  Hell, that was the point of this entire thing to begin with.  What I didn't expect was how many mainstream series' I would touch, whether it was via Mega Man X5/6X, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.  Those are all offbeat games from big time gaming heavyweights, something that I have found a surprising amount of.   Tekken 2 doesn't quite fit into that mold.  The aforementioned games were never really considered a big deal, even if the series' they are a part of were household names.  Tekken 2 was absolutely a huge deal when it came out, a highly anticipated sequel to one of the PS1's most popular fighting games.  Arcades were on

You can call THIS, the New World Order of Wrestling, brother Let’s go back to July 7, 1996. It’s time for WCW’s Bash at the Beach, an annual pay-per-view that will be headlined by the biggest match in the company’s history.  Sting, Lex Luger and the Macho Man Randy Savage are set to defend the company’s honor against the unlikeliest of invaders.  WWF stars Razor Ramon and Diesel, now going by their real names, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, have been terrorizing WCW for months (remember, there was barely an internet, we had no idea these two were under contract to WCW when Hall jumped the barricade unannounced on Monday Nitro, especially those of us who had just turned 8).  Now called “the Outsiders,” the duo had been teasing a mystery partner for weeks.  Those of us who watched both promotions speculated on which WWF-er would show up next: Brett Hart? Mr. Perfect? The Undertaker?  Who knew? The match looked like it was going to go the way of the good guys at first.  For one, the Out

So, this week we are going to go on a bit of a detour. I wasn’t planning on covering Mega Man 8 this week, but on Father’s Day I asked my son what he wanted to do and he was like “play video games with daddy!”  I wasn’t going to tell him no.  I even told him he could pick the game.  He went right to “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem,” but when I informed him that that game was just slightly not appropriate for a 3-year old,  he happily picked Mega Man 8 as a second choice.  How fitting, starting his gaming career off with the same franchise I began mine with 25 years ago. By now just about everyone is familiar with Mega Man.  I have touched on some of its more unique games and some parts of the X series, but this is the first time we will jump into the original series.  Released in January of 1997, 8 is the only mainline series title for the Playstation 1 (it also came out on the Sega Saturn).  It would also be the last one we would see for a while, as Mega Man & Bass (which is

I just realized I missed out on the opportunity to do an on-theme post for the whole “May the 4th be with you” thing.  Oh well, better late than never I guess. It probably won’t come as a surprise that there are eleventy billion Star Wars video games out there, ranging from completely mainstream to totally obscure.  I bet most of you out there have so familiarity with “Battlefront” or “Force Unleashed,” but how many of you have played “Yoda’s Stories?”  I figured I would split the difference with a game that was a huge deal back in the 90s, but has since fallen out of the gaming consciousness: “Shadows of the Empire,” a third person shooter for the Nintendo 64. Before I get into the game, I should say that I am the rare “casual” Star Wars fan.  It seems like this is a franchise that everyone either loves to death or straight up doesn’t care about.  I have seen, and thoroughly enjoy, all the classic trilogy films.  I have seen all the prequels as well and I am