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...

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 ...

May the way of the hero lead to the Triforce For the last few years, I've talked a lot about games that I don't believe get the credit they deserve. Titles where the narrative surrounding them is different than what it should be. That can be tough to do in the internet age, where online discourse is often missing context or deeper understanding of the game being discussed. However, that isn't always the case. Sometimes, that narrative surrounding a game is absolutely spot on. There are a lot of games I cover where I feel the need to tell you how great they are. Like, if I don't tell everyone how great they are, no one else will. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is not one of those games. One need not search too long on the internet, or even dig too deeply into older gaming media, to see how revered this game is. It's not just that ALTTP receives endless, effusive praise, it's that it rarely if ever seems to have any negativity surrounding it. Even the peo...

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 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...

  As usual, it took way longer than it should have, but I did EVENTUALLY do exactly what I said I was going to. It's a year late, but I've finally made my way through the Quintet trilogy. Playing these three games became a stated goal of mine since I started podcasting last year. One of my earliest episodes covered Soul Blazer, the first title in the pseudo series. The second game, Illusion of Gaia, was also a landmark episode as it was the first one to include the intro song ("A Glass Half Full of Tears" by Aura Blaze, who's music you should check out here ). Both of them received pretty solid scores, though I didn't quite like the latter quite as much as a lot of people seem to. After all these years, I'm still surprised I never played these games when they came out. Both were definitely right up my alley and readily available to buy or even rent at my local video store, but I just never picked them up. It's a little more understandable that I had ne...

  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 ...