Gaming off the Beaten Path

  I've never been one to be picky with port differences. If I'm being honest, I usually don't even notice them and I typically don't care about small differences as long as the core gameplay remains intact. Sometimes, you can't help but notice the difference. I wouldn't call the 90's the frontier days of gaming, but the landscape wasn't nearly as settled as it was today. Things were starting to get that way, as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis went toe to toe in the console wars, establishing themselves as the two titans of the industry. But as I've talked about a lot recently, they were far from the only consoles out there. I've dedicated quite a bit of time this year learning about and playing games for some more obscure consoles from the era, which has really broadened my horizons when it comes to old school games. I've discovered a lot of interesting stuff and learned a lot about the consoles that kind of fell between the cracks, at le...

  "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...