Gaming off the Beaten Path

Rise of the Robots After a disappointing 90s fighting game, lets try and get back on the horse.   I mean, it’s not like there was a shortage of 1 Vs 1 arcade style fighting games in that era.  Few of them were going to match the quality of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but sometimes you just need a little change of pace. They already screwed up dinosaurs, but robots are cool too. How could you possibly screw that up?  Check out this add from GamePro back in the day.  Look at all these badass robots: But as we learned last week, just having a cool concept and shoehorning it into a fighting game wasn’t always a recipe for success.  Publisher Time Warner missed the mark a little bit with Primal Rage.  They missed it completely with Rise of the Robots.  I could say this game sucks, but that wouldn’t accurately convey how terrible it is.  I would call it crap, but I would never disparage fecal matter by comparing it...

Lets take a quick trip back to 1994. Bill Clinton is president.  Boys II Men and Whitney Houston are on top of the charts. George Foreman is world heavyweight champion and Major League Baseball is on strike.  O.J. Is on the run. Kurt Cobain is dead.  And I don’t care about any of it because I am six years old. It may have been an eventful year for the world, but my world revolved around video games and dinosaurs.  I knew more about dinosaurs than most people know about their own families.  The same was (and may still be) true of video games, especially fighting games.  I had grown tired of games like Mario and Duck Hunt, I was starting to get into RPGs, but at that time, I was all about Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.  When I heard they were going to make a game that was essentially Mortal Kombat with Dinosaurs, I lost my tiny little mind. It took a year, but in 1995 Primal Rage finally made its way to the SNES.  I...

Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet I have complained at length on this blog about popular gaming franchises receiving a pass for putting out lousy or even average games.  This is especially true of Nintendo’s first party standbys. In the 25+ years I have been playing video games, I can count on my hands the number of titles based on Nintendo IPs that received bad reviews.  If you don’t count the CD-I titles (and you shouldn’t), you could probably count them on one hand.  Take Mario Party titles out the equation and its down to one finger.  Look, Nintendo rarely makes bad games, but there are a number of titles from their extensive catalog that would have received an average at best reception if they weren’t Mario/Zelda/Metroid Etc.  All of those Zelda handheld titles come to mind.  Hell, the mainstream gaming media tried to convince us that Mario Clash was worthy of an 8/10 back in the day. Now that I’m done ranting, we ca...

For a lot of gamers, sports games are a love it or hate it affair.  Some gamers want jocks out of nerd culture, or think that playing a game about something they could go outside and do is a waste of time.  Yet others love the skill testing and competitive nature, or want an opportunity to live the dream of playing in the pros. Personally, I think franchise mode Madden is the most underrated RPG of all time.  I could go on as to why, but we aren’t here to talk about Madden or any of its simulation style brethren.  Today, we discuss arcade style sports titles.  Specifically, the long forgotten NHL Hitz franchise. Most gamers, both casual and hardcore, are familiar with NBA Jam or NFL Blitz.  Rather than focus on a realistic representation of their sports, these titles focused on insane plays and bone crunching hits.  Why make a perfect form tackle when you can German suplex the QB and then hit him with an elbow drop?  I...

Oh boy, here’s an interesting one. Part of this whole “off the beaten path” thing is avoiding the infamous games as much as it is avoiding the famous ones.  You don’t need me to tell you all that Superman 64 is terrible or that all of those CD-I Zelda games suck.  The internet and common sense already told us all that as much as they told us that Super Mario World is great.  There’s a consensus there and its not based solely on name value. Which brings us to Quest 64.  One of, like, three N64 RPGs, quest is pretty much universally disliked.  It isn’t for lack of studio star power, THQ is gone now but they were cranking out hits in the late 90s.  Most of the complaints stem from the game’s simplicity, lack of story and general “my first RPG” vibe.  But are those criticisms valid?  And does it deserve the reputation it has?  Yes.  And Also No.   We will start with the story, or lack thereof.  You p...

Looking back at my last couple of posts, I realize I have been neglecting the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation.  It’s strange, because I probably have more PS2 games than anything, seeing as I had a lot of disposable income and time when they were at the end of its lifespan.  I bought a lot of $10 games in those days.   And apparently, Guilty Gear X2 was one of those games.  Released in 2003, its the third in a series of fighting games that date back to 1998.  While the game has its share of sequels, with the most recent coming in 2015, it isn’t exactly a mainstream series.  If I were asked to name fighting game series’ I’d go a long way before I got to Guilty Gear.  But is it any good? I will start with two elements of the game, one very bad and one very good, that stood out the most.  Essentially, they will cancel each other out in my evaluation. First, the bad.  Anime.  Remember the Cosmic Star Heroine re...

Moving away from the 16-bit era, its time once again to discuss a PS1 era RPG. It’s no secret that there were tons of these on the PlayStation and while many of them are considered all time classics, many more have fallen into obscurity. The Granstream Saga definitely falls into the latter category. What we have here is an action RPG released towards the middle of the systems life-cycle that was intended as a spiritual successor to Japan-only Super Nintendo (well, Super Famicom) game Terranigma. Thanks to the wonders of emulation and fan translations, Terranigma has established itself as a cult classic in the West. It’s pseudo-sequel, despite having actually been released in the U.S., is still just a footnote. Starting with the story, you play as a young man named Eon, who is responsible for cutting pieces off of his home continent to help it float. The surface of Eon’s world is covered in water, with what’s left of humanity living on a series of four floating continen...