Gaming off the Beaten Path

  I'm not one for overly difficult games, but this one has been on my list for a long, long time. I think I've covered more Mega Man titles than any other series. What can I say, I've always loved these games. Despite being an iconic video game character, the blue bomber fits more into the whole "off the beaten path" theme than you would think. I forget where it was, I ended up looking at the series' sales figures and was shocked to find just how few units it has moved. I guess it makes some level of sense. Mega Man has had quite a few fits of starts and stops, often coming out with two, three, four titles in the span of a few years before going dark. A lot of this is due to spinoffs, I always considered the classic and X series to kind of be one and one A, but there is also Battle network, Legends and a host of other interesting outliers. A lot of folks consider these games to be incredibly difficult. Honestly, I just don't see it. Maybe it's because

  The way things stand, yours is a world where wishes can't come true anymore. It goes without saying, but certain combinations just work. Sometimes, those combinations are obvious while other times, they aren't. It's weird, because Super Mario RPG always kind of fit both categories. On one hand, how could a joint effort from Nintendo and Square (still Squaresoft at the time) go wrong? Both of these companies were riding high, especially in the mid-90's when it felt like neither of these juggernauts could do any wrong. Yet at the same time, the thought of platforming icon Mario starring in a turn-based RPG felt a little...off. How was anyone going to take a plumber who jumps on turtles in linear levels and turn him into a full-fledged  RPG hero? Would this experiment  work out? Or would it crash and burn? I think we all know the answer to that, but I don't think a lot of people really look at why this game was so successful , why it was so revered and why it receive

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

  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

  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

  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

  It's come to my attention that last week was the 30th anniversary of one of gaming's most iconic franchises: Mortal Kombat. I can't believe it's been 30 years since the bone crunching, blood gushing debut of MK, a franchise that's now a household name even outside of gaming circles. It may not have always given us the best games, but few IPs have had as much impact on media as a whole as Mortal Kombat. Not going to lie, I wasn't quite there from the beginning. I was only 4 in 1992 when the original game hit the arcade, I was dabbling in video games at the time but it's not like I could get in the car and drive myself to an arcade. It wasn't really the next year, when MKII hit the arcades where I got found the franchise for the first time. I will never forget walking into the arcade at the now-defunct Bowcraft, seeing the cabinet with Raiden calling down thunderbolts and thinking to myself "I have to play that." Of course my parents let me, th

  Uuhhhhh....huh huh huh. Huh huh huh. Huh huh huh. Heh. Eh Heh Heh heh. Heh Heh.. Ummmm, so, like, this time we're going to be talking about the Beavis and Butt-Head game for Super Nintendo or something. I don't know if it's going to be good, but like... it looks pretty cool. Yeah! heh heh. This game is going to rule! There's going to be tons of action! And Music Videos! And FIRE! Uuuhhhh, yeah. Sounds pretty cool. But what if it like, sucks? Like it's just a bunch of Bon Jovi videos or something? Beavis and Butt-Head in a video game? I'm there dude! In all seriousness, I figured I would give Beavis and Butt-Head on the SNES a shot now that the not-so-dynamic duo is back. I have yet to see the new show or movie, but they have received what I feel is a surprising amount of critical acclaim. Remember, Beavis and Butt-Head was the show that represented the oncoming downfall of society, the animated effigies of disinterested, braindead youth into which video games