Gaming off the Beaten Path

  It's time to check another obscure 90's console off the list. Okay, it's not really THAT obscure, but it's definitely not one a lot of people, or anyone I know really, grew up with. Arcade giants SNK are very well known in the gaming community, especially among fighting game fans. Samurai Showdown, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, you could go all day just listing out fighting games that they were responsible for. Of course, they also had plenty of other well known titles like Metal Slug and Ikari Warriors. SNK is actually still in business today, though it's technically not the same as the original company went bankrupt in the early 00's. Normally I try to include some basic background about how these companies end up where they do, but I am going to spare everyone thousands of words of legal jargon and just simply describe the company's history with an emphatic "it's complicated." Either way, most gamers knew about their titles from either arc...

  As anyone who was around in the 90's could tell you, one on one fighting games were absolutely everywhere. I know I've talked about the mid to end of the decade being a golden era for RPGs, but it seems like the entire decade was a golden era for tournament fighters. These things were absolutely everywhere, largely due to the popularity of the two pillars of the genre, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. Argue that other series' were better all you want, talk all you want about how Karate Champ or Pit Fighter came first, but the absolutely insane levels of success of those two games are what catapulted the fighting genre into the stratosphere. It became the most popular genre in arcades by far and was probably neck and neck with mascot platformers for the top spot on consoles, though it didn't quite take off as much on PC. Some developers tried to innovate, but far, far more tried to simply rip off the two titans. I could probably spend an entire half hour just listi...

  Sometimes, I wish I had more time to play video games. You know what? That's not a sometimes, it's an always kind of thing. I actually do play the games I review and unless something is just straight up terrible, I try to play it to completion. Trust me, I'd like to play more RPGs but I can't bang out a 40 hour game in a week. Usually, I feel like I have sufficient time to get at least an everyday gamer's level of understanding of a game. That's kind of all I need, it's sort of in line with my gimmick. But sometimes I come across something I wish I could put more time into, or at least feel like I should put more time into. I have heard since the 90's just how great Virtua Fighter 2 is, that it's incredibly easy to learn but incredibly difficult to master. I don't know how true it is, but I remember hearing stories of Japanese players lining up and waiting for hours to receive lessons from pro VF2 players back in the 90's. It's not hard...

 Whenever something is successful, there are going to be imitators. That's especially true of video games. I think just about everyone that has ever picked up a video game controller has played or at least heard of Super Smash Bros. Honestly, I'm surprised it took someone until 1998 to think of the concept. A company takes the characters from its most famous IPs and shoehorns them into a fighting game, what's not to like? Smash Bros. was an instant success when it landed on the N64 and every time a new version of the game comes out, it's a major deal. One of the major factors that sets Smash appart from other fighting games is its accessibility. It's so incredibly easy to learn, each character's special moves are all performed the same way and they all get similar effects from their buttons. But it's tough to master, players have spent countless hours studying frame data and perfecting strategies for the strongest characters. Super Smash Bros. Melee for the ...

  You learn something new every day I guess. I was very much aware of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Like, very much aware. I put tons of hours into that game. It barely missed out on being a 10's game. It's the only game I've ever played in any sort of semi-official competition (I won my first round matchup before getting absolutely smashed by someone who actually knew what they were doing in the second). And yet I didn't realize it was actually the third game in the Street Fighter III series. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like Capcom didn't have a penchant for doing this. Street Fighter II was essentially it's own series, there's World Warrior, Champion Edition, Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, Super Turbo, on and on, you get the point. So I guess it makes sense that they would do the same thing with SF III and I shouldn't have been too shocked to see that there were two other games, New Generation and 2nd Impact, that were rele...

We've talked quite a bit about remakes over the last few weeks, so I guess now is as good a time as ever to also look at a reboot. Reboots have some similarities to remakes, but they are most certainly not the same. Whereas a remake tends to stick with similar plot or gameplay mechanics from its original, reboots tend to change one or both of those things entirely. Moreover, they are created with the express purpose of doing so. A lot of video game series have done this over the years, Mortal Kombat is the first one that comes to mind. I have heard some folks say the Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually a reboot. It isn't, because reboots typically erase all previous cannon and FFVIIR doesn't, but it does feel like one in a lot of ways. I don't want to get too far into it, because we could go all day talking about hard reboots vs. soft reboots and other minutia like that. Instead, I want to focus on the 2013 reboot of Killer Instinct, a game that I always wanted to ch...

  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...

  Hey wait, didn't you already play that? Nah, you guys aren't crazy, I already played Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for the SNES, quite a while ago at this point. This time, I'm previewing the Genesis version. But remember, the gaming industry wasn't always like it is now, where every game that gets released across different consoles is essentially the same. It's not that that never happened during the bit wars, because it did. Street Fighter II Turbo and Champion Edition are essentially the same and I could think of tons of examples like that. But in a lot of cases, especially during the 4th generation, every console got different versions of a game. And we aren't just talking slightly different, we are talking a completely different game entirely. I actually kind of like the way it is now, where each console gets the same version. Because back in the day, there was a lot of contention over which version of which game was better, especially between SNES a...

  After a few years of doing this, I've come to realize that what constitutes "off the beaten path" is entirely subjective. There are certainly video game series' that are part of more general popular culture. I would venture a guess that most people out there have heard of Mario or Sonic, even if they've never picked up a controller in their lives. But by the same token, I'm sure there's also someone out there that's like "Shadow Madness? That's not obscure! You don't know what obscure is until you've played Kaiju No Riho: Gaijin Densetsu Gaiden: Don't Panic! without an English translation patch!" I know I've certainly played my share of games that aren't all that obscure. But some of them are really out there for me. I grew up without a Sega console, so stuff like Phantasy Star and Shining Force were completely foreign to me. And that's true of all of us. Ask an American gamer what their favorite ZX Spectrum ga...