Gaming off the Beaten Path

  Hey, he said he'd be back. We are forging ahead with our licensed 80's movie games, but there's no way we were moving past Arnold Schwarzennegger without covering Terminator. This is the first time we are going to be covering the franchise, but it's most certainly not going to be the last. For one, there are tons of Terminator games out there across a variety of consoles and generations. But for all I talk about how much I dislike movies, Terminator and Terminator 2 are among the rare examples of films that I can watch over and over again. The second movie is particularly excellent, still one of my all time favorites to this day. I think most people are familiar with the plot by now. The year is 2029, and humanity is on its last legs, fighting off a horde of sentient machines led by a rogue AI, Chat G...err, uh, Skynet. Skynet decides the best way to finally end humanity is to send a highly advanced Terminator, the T-1000, back in time to kill resistance leader John C...

  It seems like every series, even the most popular ones, has at least one title that kind of falls through the cracks. You'd be hard pressed to find a lifelong gamer who has never heard of Double Dragon, maybe someone younger as the series' heyday was way back in the 3rd generation. The first three games are considered NES classics, even though the third is considered a bit of a step down and often the butt of jokes in the online gaming community. The games star the Lee brothers, Billy and Jimmy (or is it Bimmy?) as they take on the evil Black Warrior (a translation error later corrected to Shadow Warrior) gang. It may sound simple on paper, but Double Dragon broke a lot of ground in the beat 'em up genre gameplay and style-wise. It was one of the first genres with continuous scrolling, unique movesets and the ability to take enemy weapons. It featured cutscenes and a much darker atmosphere, drawing inspiration from both Enter the Dragon and Mad Max. I have complained on h...

  X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse I'm a little bit shocked that it has taken me this long to get to an X-Men game, but here we are. I don't think everyone's favorite team of non-reptilian mutants needs any introduction. The X-Men have been featured in just about every kind of media imaginable, from comic books to Saturday morning cartoons to major movies, the X-Men have been a big deal for a very long time. While most 80's and 90's kids have some familiarity with the cartoon series, and children of the 00's will probably have seen at list one of films, that only scratches the surface of how deep the group's lore goes. Believe me, this iceberg goes deep, you've got alternate universes, pasts, futures, other teams like X-Force and X-Factor, stuff that a hardcore X-Men fan could probably explain to you but is completely over my head. Honestly, I wasn't really a huge fan of the cartoon, I always found it to be an incredibly oppressive and bleak show and it shoc...

  I complain about modern games a lot, but I can't say I don't love all the pseudo-classic games that are seemingly everywhere nowadays. Most of these seem to be indie games, titles made by a hand-full of developers, or maybe even just one. It could just be me, but I feel like a lot of these are Metroidvania games, I've already covered Hollow Knight which would certainly fit into this category. Anodyne and Cosmic Star Heroine definitely fit too. In addition to being made in the old-school style, these games also have something very important in common: they are all indie games. This week's game is no different, even if it does carry the one of the biggest licenses of all time. They may not be as popular as they were in the 80's and 90's, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are still hugely relevant. And yet, it had been a long time since they've received a new game. That changed in 2022 with the release of 2022's Shredder's Revenge. Shredder'...

  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...

  As I come to the end of year 4 of GOTBP, I've come to realize that some genres are less conducive to innovation than others. I feel like RPGs, first person shooters and 3D platformers are all genres where innovation is relatively common. Whenever I write about those kinds of games, I always feel like I have a lot to say about each individual game. Other genres, however, just don't seem to have as much innovation from title to title. Whether that's due to lack of opportunity or lack of desire, it just seems to be the case. Of all the genres I've played, it feels like beat 'em ups are always lacking in innovation. I will admit some bias, as it isn't my favorite genre, but I think even fans would admit that a lot of these games start to feel very same-y after a while. However, this can have advantages as well. Sometimes, small innovations in these genres can make games stand out in a big way, which was sort of the case with this week's entry. Released for the...

  As someone who plays old games almost exclusively, I'm constantly reminded of how big the jump between console generations could be. Look at a PS4 game vs. a PS5 title, or an XBox One game vs. a Series S game and it can be hard to tell they are even from different generations. Sure, if you look more closely you can see the newer consoles are superior, but the differences don't always jump off the screen at you. But compare a PS1 game to a PS2 game, or an NES game to an SNES title and you will know the difference immediately. This was a major part of Sega's marketing strategy in the late 80's and early 90's, when the 16-bit Genesis was still competing directly with the 8-bit NES. Sure, the NES may have boasted a much larger library of games featuring some classic titles, but it was much easier to point to a simple screenshot of a Genesis game and say "look." Sure, it was a lot easier to do with some games than others. I've reviewed some earlier Genesi...

Last week, we looked at a game that had tons of prerelease hype, which managed to meet or even surpass its high expectation. This week, we will turn our focus to a game that...didn't. It's hard to convey what a big deal The Bouncer was when it was announced for the then-new PS2. The developers had big ideas in mind, promising a gritty, movie-like story with revolutionary game physics, interactable environments and customizable characters. A lot of small developers get themselves in trouble making promises like this. But this was no pet project of a small up and coming developer. This was coming from Squaresoft (along with DreamFactory), the company behind Final Fantasy, a series you might have heard of. It's not that Square never made bad games, but they were few and far between. So when they made the promises they did, we all expected them to pay them off. They had Final Fantasy stalwarts Shinji Hashimoto and Tetsuya Nomura working on the game, how could they not. The fi...

  For some of us, video games are like comfort food. You know it's bad for you, but something about it just makes you happy. For a lot of people that grew up with a Genesis, Altered Beast seems to be one of those games. Originally released as an arcade game in 1988, Altered Beast eventually became a pack in game with Sega's new 16-bit console. It was ported to dozens of other consoles and computers as well, but for today, we are discussing the Genesis version. It's the one I played and the one I am most familiar with. I wasn't really a Sega kid growing up, but most people that were would always bring up this game as one they felt some affinity for. Today, it's looked at with a lot of fondness and nostalgia by those that played it when it first came out. At the same time, even those that are nostalgic for the title recognize that it isn't actually that great. Even with all the nostalgia surrounding it, most Genesis fans recognize its not in the same category as S...

 One of the common themes I have found since I started doing reviews is the close link between film and video games. I've covered video games about movies , movies about video games and even video games about movies about video games . But this week's entry is a different animal entirely. Since the early days of video games, it feels like people from both the gaming and movie industries have been trying make the two mediums work together. As we've seen, it usually doesn't work out. As to why, well, that's its own discussion. I, for one, am not really a movie person, I've always had trouble sitting still and just watching something for two hours. Anyway, one of the ways that game developers blur the lines is by bringing in well known actors (or using their likenesses) as "stars" in their games. And I'm not talking about sponsoring stuff, like you see a lot with sports games, I'm talking about they star as the character in a movie-esque, narrati...