Gaming off the Beaten Path

 It's time to go back to the Sega Genesis well once again. No, I'm not confused, you are.  Yes, I'm sure its a Genesis game.  Just because Nintendo insisted on including the word "Super" in just about every SNES title doesn't mean Sega was contractually forbidden from using the word.  Besides, Super Thunder Blade came out before the SNES even existed. It was a launch title for the Genesis (or Mega Drive, depending on where you're from) when it came out in 1988 in Japan and would make its way to the U.S., also as a launch title, about a year later. Like so, so many of the SNES "Supers,"  Super Thunder Blade is a sorta-sequel to the arcade game Thunder Blade.  Sega added the Super to differentiate it from a similar port to its 8-bit Master System.  Yeah, weird, who knew Nintendo ripped that genius idea off of its hated rival?  The game is a 3rd person flying game, putting you in the cockpit of an attack helicopter as you attempt to shoot down as ma

Titles are hard. I've always hated naming things I write, whether it was headlines for news articles or titles for meeting notes at work.  I'm not going to say I'm bad at it, but I find it very frustrating.  It's one of those things that people don't realize is a major ask of creatives/copywriters/etc. With that in mind, it won't come as a surprise that I am going to give Sega a pass for giving this week's entry a confusing name.  It could just be me, but the first thing I thought of when I heard the title "Gain Ground" was a football game.  That was about as far off as I could have gotten.  Released in arcades in 1988, Gain Ground was intended as Sega's answer to Gauntlet.  While the aesthetic may be similar, I don't think they got particularly close to aping Nintendo's popular fantasy game.  They did, however, create a unique and interesting blend of top down action and single screen puzzle games.  Think Bomberman meets Smash TV.

Oh boy, I have been dreading this for a long time.  It’s time to talk about one of the scourges of the gaming world: licensed movie tie-ins.   There was a point in time where you absolutely knew any game based on a movie was going to be complete trash.  Developers would slap together something as quickly as they could, throw on a label and flood store shelves with it.  These were almost universally shameless cash grabs designed to separate gamers, and their unassuming parents and relatives, from their hard earned money.  Fortunately, that has changed to a degree as quality control has become better.  But it still happens. First, a little bit about the source material for today’s game.  In true “Street Fighter: The Movie” style, we have a video game that’s based on a movie that’s based on a book, the first in Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series.  I remember reading the book when I was younger and thinking it was alright, but I never read any of t

It seems like just about every game gets at least one sequel, no matter how lousy it is or how poorly it sells. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a direct sequel, hell sometimes it can even be a prequel, just a second game in the series. I am wracking my brain for a single one.  Well, other than this week’s entry, of course. Nano Breaker is an action game released for the PS2 in the early aughts.  It’s a Konami game, so its not like it came out of a small studio that closed down or anything like that.  It didn’t get the best reviews or anything but again, gaming is such a sequel happy medium that it is a tad surprising the IP was just abandoned.  There were certainly a lot of interesting elements presented here, so why not give it another shot?   Before we get into that, let’s discuss the gameplay a bit.  One of the first games I reviewed on GOTBP was “Castlevania: Lament of Innocnence,” another Konami title.  It took about two seconds of playing Nan

The Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon Hi Kids!  Today we are going to talk about a very serious topic...drugs. It’s no secret that drugs are bad for you.  They are illegal, unhealthy and expensive.  Of course, that isn’t going to stop people from using them, but just because someone else does something doesn’t mean you should too.  Even if they can make you see or feel something completely out of the realm of ordinary, the long and short term effects can be devastating.   Besides, there are plenty of ways to experience what its like to be high/tripping/rolling/etc. without risking your health.  One of those is to play “The Mystical Ninja.”  The best way I can imagine this game’s development is that a team of folks at Konami hacked the source code of Super Mario 64, ingested one or more types of some unknown illicit substance, watched a documentary about Japanese culture and made a video game. And, despite all of its technical flaws, its an awesome one.