Gaming off the Beaten Path

  After having such a miserable time with the first Street Fighter game, I decided it was time to go back and revisit another Capcom series first and a game I referenced several times in that review. It's 25 years old and nearly all of its sequels are better games, but the original Mega Man is still loved and respected by gamers today. Many people go back to this game and go back to it relatively frequently, even if not as frequently as its direct sequels. It may have sold poorly upon release, but it's widely considered one of the more influential games of all time. But what made the original Mega Man so different than the original Street Fighter? I mean, comparing a 2D side scroller to a 1v1 fighting game isn't that simple and it's probably an apples to oranges comparison. But they were both first games in what would become hugely popular series' released in the same year and made by the same company. So why was one front and center on the biggest gaming console ...

 You can drop this one straight into the "that exists?" file. I'm not going to lie, when this game was first bought to my attention I thought it would be a fan-made game or a hack or something along those lines. But nope, there really was a dodgeball video game for the NES, released in 1989 by a company called Technos. This was apparently an arcade port, I am unsure if the original cabinet ever left Japan, but I highly doubt it. Personally I think the name is a bit confusing, so many SNES games had "Super" in the title, it was weird to see it on an NES game other than Super Mario Bros. But I digress. Super Dodgeball is exactly what it sounds like, a video game where you play dodgeball. There's a one player world cup mode, along with a versus mode and something called bean ball, which can be played with either one or two players. This mode is more like a schoolyard game, with every player out for themselves and able to move freely at any point. The other two ...

  "This game was soooooo ahead of its time." How many times have we heard that before? Hell, how many times have I said it on here myself? Probably a million or so, give or take. While it's always had its reliance on certain genres, from 2D fighters to mascot platformers to open world adventures, the video game industry has never been afraid of a little innovation. It may not seem like it now, but it's true. And it was especially true during the 3rd console generation: make no mistake about it, the late 80's and early 90's were still very much the wild, wild west. It's not that developers didn't try their best to innovate in the first two generations, but their hands were often tied by extremely limited technology. It's not that they didn't try (and succeed) on the 4th, 5th or even 6th generation consoles, but by that point people were starting to figure out what worked and what didn't in a video game. The NES (and Master System, etc.) were...

 Just realized I forgot to post these here, will get started with part 1: And here's part 2:

In our last "Was it Really?" we took a look at the Virtual Boy, widely considered a complete bust of a console and one of the worst stains on the gaming industry. In the end, I determined that it wasn't nearly as bad as it's reputation, though it's still pretty bad. This time, I'm going to pivot from a console to an individual game, one that many gamers know and one I'm intimately familiar with. Silver Surfer, a shoot em' up for the NES, is widely considered one of the most difficult video games in history, so much so that it's become legendary amongst the internet gaming community. It was one of popular YouTuber "The Angry Video Game Nerd"'s first targets and if you go back and watch the video he made today, you'll see that his anger and frustration with the game, normally embellished, are as real as it gets. I can't say I blame him. This was one of the earliest NES games I ever played, my cousin had it and we spent HOURS try...

In case you couldn't tell, I've played a lot of video games in my lifetime. About 10 years ago, I actually listed out every title I'd ever played and it was already well into the thousands. And again, that was 10 years ago. I've seen good and bad, unique and formulaic, inspired and boring, violent and family friendly, and everything in between. My past two years of posts have been a pretty good microcosm of the industry really, there have been a few stinkers, mostly okay to good games and a few true standouts. I've discussed my love for games like Doom, Street Fighter, Madden and Final Fantasy VII and how they kept me hooked on the medium throughout my years. But as important as they were in my gaming journey, it all started with Mega Man 3. It wasn't the first game I ever played, I remember being as young as 4 and playing Super Mario Bros at a friend's house. My cousin had an NES and I remember us both getting very frustrated that we couldn't beat any o...

Here's another one from the "my son wanted to play video games with me" file. He's been really into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles recently, and when he found out there was a TMNT video game, he was super pumped.  As far as he knows, this is the only Ninja Turtles in existance and honestly, when I was his age I thought the same thing.  It seems most people think of the original TMNT when they talk about Turtles games on the NES and Turtles in Time when they talk about Turtles games throughout history.  But for me, TMNT: The Arcade Game will always be the first one I think of. I don't think the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need any introduction.  Anyone that grew up in the 80's or 90's had some exposure to these four mutant reptiles named after renaissance artists and their rat sensei.  Whether they were huge fans or casual viewers, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo were a part of kids' Saturday Mornings everywhere. None of us had any idea...

While the series is a little too mainstream for what I originally intended, I realize that I have yet to review a Mario game.  I have tried to stick to the obscure, but at this point I have covered Sonic, Final Fantasy, Madden and any number of popular franchises, so why not. I still wanted to keep it a little out there though.  Most people have heard of the Lost Levels, but its certainly the black sheep of the old school series.  It’s origin story is probably more well known than the game itself.  This was actually Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan.  It was deemed “too difficult” for U.S. audiences by Nintendo of America, as it was assumed they weren’t as skilled or patient as Japanese players.  Instead of releasing it stateside, they re-skinned a game called Doki Doki Panic with Mario characters, called it Super Mario Bros 2 and called it a day (which explains why that game is so different from everything else in the series).  It wasn’...

Oh great, another racing game.   Look, I think I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t really like these things, but they don’t take too much time to play or review.  This one isn’t even that obscure, a lot of folks that played video games in those days have heard of it and its even part of the Nintendo World Championship cartridge.  It wasn’t quite mainstream, but not really off the path either. I do talk a lot on here about “the name in the corner” with games.  Games are frequently under- or overrated because of who developed or published them, probably more so than any other type of media.  It was true then and it it still true now, even though there are far fewer developers (if you aren’t counting indie developers, of course) than there used to be.  Most of the ones that were around in those days were very specialized and known for making games in only one or two genres. And that’s what makes Rad Racer weird.  You m...

This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most important game consoles ever released...the Nintendo GameBoy.  It may not have looked liked much, but this little gray beast with monochrome graphics stuck around for 14 years, outlasting the NES, SNES and N64.  Hell, the GameCube came out before Nintendo stopped making these things. They came out with all sorts of iterations, including the smaller and better lit GameBoy Pocket and the GameBoy Color, which, you guessed it, played games in color.  There were also about eleventy billion accessories, maybe three of which were actually useful. I wanted to review a GameBoy game in honor of the milestone, but most of mine have been lost to the ages.  The GameBoy was great to take on the road with you, but the small cartridges were easy to lose in all sorts of places.  I didn’t want to play any of the obvious ones, so, Star Wars it is. This is a straight up port of the NES Star W...