Gaming off the Beaten Path

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...

  It might sound hard to believe, but a lot of us weren't sure what to expect when Super Mario 64 was first announced. At the time, none of us really knew what was going to happen when games made the jump into 3D, especially not us console gamers. What would Mario look like? How would it play? How would it stay true to the structure of the old games? Seriously, there were a lot of questions, even from hardcore Nintendo fanboys. It didn't take long for us to get our answers though. When the Nintendo 64 finally arrived in late 1996, there were only two games available at launch, Super Mario 64 being one of them. And it's the one just about all of us got as soon as we could. Fun fact, my Nintendo 64 is the first thing I ever bought with my own money. I had been doing odd jobs around the house since it was announced and when I fired it up for the first time, my mind was blown. I remember the first time I saw Mario's face in full 3D, I probably spent like 20 minutes just pla...

  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...

It's a two for one offering this week. Double the Mega Man! I've wanted to discuss these two games for a while and it's been quite some time since I have discussed the Mega Man series, so I figured now was the time. I know I've covered these games a lot, but what can I say, I love that little blue guy. While I've certainly discussed MM a ton, probably more than any gaming franchise, I've found that the series provides tons of oddities that most mainstream series' just don't. I think it comes from being one of the early targets of the "its the same game over and over again" critics, it's definitely the first series I remember being slammed by reviewers for that. Honestly, they weren't completely off base in that assessment. It seems that Capcom heard the criticism and took it to heart, sometimes almost too much so. Some of their spinoffs worked, some didn't. But I'm not sure any of those spinoffs are quite as obscure as these two...