Gaming off the Beaten Path

  It's been a while since I've discussed Mega Man and, hey, I'm always looking for the excuse to do so. I've talked at length about my love for the series and I even spent a month covering some of its more obscure entries in the early days of the blog. Mega Man 3 is on my 10s list, and it's the game that's essentially responsible for me picking up video games as a hobby to begin with. But for as much as I love the series, at least the original and X series, I had yet to play Mega Man 10 until now. It's not that I never had the desire to, I just never got around to it. I loved Mega Man 9, I consider it to be one of the best games of the 7th generation. This was the early days of the whole "new old-style games" trend, and Mega Man 9 and 10 were huge when they came out. It didn't hurt that it had been almost 15 years since a new title in the series came out. But while Mega Man 9 was met with near universal acclaim, the 10th entry was a little bit

  Looks like we are sticking with first person shooters this week. This time though, we're moving back a generation. Nintendo consoles have always had a reputation for being more kid and family oriented. That's probably because, well, they kind of are. I don't really see anything wrong with that, I would rather play a quality game without gratuitous violence than a lousy game with it. That being said, there is something to be said for offering more variety and having games targeted at older audience. More adult games don't necessarily mean more violence, games get T or M ratings for reasons other than blood and gore, but it often comes with the territory. And it's a territory the big N doesn't play in quite as frequently as its competitors. Remember how the SNES version of Mortal Kombat had sweat instead of blood? However, it also meant that when these games were announced, they tended to garner a lot of hype. The gaming media lost their collective minds when th

The early 00's were a very formative time for video games. This was especially true of console first person shooters. FPS' were dime a dozen on the PC, but it was still a bit of a struggle to get them right on consoles. The first real success, at least to me, came in the form of a handful of really solid Doom ports to the 5th generation consoles, as well as some noble efforts to port the FPS giant to 4th gen hardware (I played a tons of SNES Doom, and I still find it very enjoyable despite the fact it's definitely not the best way to play the game). Turok: Dinosaur Hunter gave way to Goldeneye, which gave way to Perfect Dark on the N64. And if those titles were the seed of FPS' as a viable genre on console, Halo was the tree they eventually blossomed into. Look, I don't like Halo nearly as much as most people do. But you absolutely cannot deny it was revolutionary in terms of graphics, presentation, gameplay and especially control scheme. Halo did for FPS on console

  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

  Contrary to popular belief, Sonic the Hedgehog hasn't always been Sega's mascot. I always forget how much earlier than the SNES that the Genesis was released, or how long it competed directly with the NES. I am a little young to remember the true early days of the "Genesis does what Ninten-don't" campaign, though it was still around in some form when I was growing up. To people my age, Sonic the Hedgehog is Sega's mascot and always has been. However, that wasn't actually the case. Because before there was everyone's favorite super fast, super blue hedgehog with attitude, there was a derpy little boy name Alex Kidd. Released in 1989, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle is actually the only one of the series' five games to come out on the Genesis. Developed and published by Sega, it was the fourth game in a franchise that dated back to the early days of the Master System, Sega's 3rd generation console. I'm not going to lie, I don't think

  Believe it or not, I actually do have goals. They may be stupid, but they are technically goals.' One of my stated goals this year is to play through the entirety of the Quintet trilogy. You would think I would make my goals stuff like learn a skill or a language or something. Why waste time on a hobby you enjoy, right? Anyway, the Quintet trilogy is a series of highly regarded action RPGs which, for whatever reason, I never got around to playing. That's kind of odd for me, because I played tons of RPGs in the 90's and 00's. I hit most of the main SNES titles, but I missed these three, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma (at least the two games that came out in the U.S., Terranigma was never released here). Some people consider The Granstream Saga, which I played a long time ago, to be the fourth game in the series, but that's not always the case. They always seemed up my alley, but just kind of passed me by. Anyway, the three games in question are not re

  With the amount of unique video games that exists, it's always surprising how certain subject matter just isn't represented all that frequently. There really aren't that many games about firefighters out there and it kind of feels odd. They do exist, but they are few and far between and it almost feels like there should be more. I mean, how many kids out there want to be firemen? How many towns have all volunteer fire departments? How many firefighter shows are on TV? It's not like the premise would be completely out there. And yet, firefighting games are few and far between and the few that do exist tend to be off the radar budget titles. Which brings us to Real Heroes: Firefighter. Originally released in 2009 for the Wii, it was updated and ported to the PS4, XBox One and Switch in 2020. The game has so many publishers and developers listed for it that I couldn't tell you exactly who created which version and when. What is immediately apparent is that RH:F was m