Vidya Game News – August 4, 2016
– Holy hell, get at this treasure trove before Nintendo takes it down! Thirteen years of Nintendo Power have been put on the Internet Archive. The covers alone are awesome. Read them alllll here. (Note: Some sites say that Nintendo has authorized the posting, so mayyybeeee they’ll stay up longer than a hot minute.)
– Matt Grosinger of Nerdist has a ranking of all the songs in Mario Kart 64, from worst to best.
– The 54-acre former home of Atari in Beverly is now looking for tenants, per Banker and Tradesman.
– Hardcore Gamer is doing a week-long retrospective on the Metroid series, with the topic of this article being Metroid Prime’s incredible music.
– To the surprise of almost no one, the developer of the new Ghostbusters video game that didn’t tie into the old series OR the new one didn’t have a successful release. Fireforge has filed for bankruptcy, claiming $12 million in debt, only three days after launching the game. Read more on Kotaku.
– Chris Reed at Entertainment Cheat Sheet has a pretty neat list of 10 games millennials have forgotten about.
– Polygon’s Michael McWhertor has eight minutes of Sonic Mania gameplay posted, and shockingly, it doesn’t look bad! Check it out here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Doom 3, the first attempted reboot of the series by id Software, came out on Aug. 3, 2004. While it wasn’t really followed-up by id, the more story-based game got good reviews, and it was pretty fun!
– Konami’s Silent Hill 3, a direct sequel to the first game in the series, came out for the PS2 on Aug. 5, 2003.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Vidya Game News – April 21, 2016
– As you can imagine, there is a bunch of Star Fox content this week, because a new game in the series is coming out. (The initial reviews seem to suggest it’s good, but weird control-wise.) Kotaku’s Patrick Klepek has a good piece on why Star Fox 2 never made it out for the SNES, even though it was probably more than 90 percent done. Kat Bailey of US Gamer points out that the series has a long history of innovation – some good, some bad.
– Sega has announced that it’ll allow mods to be released via Steam for some of its old games. Polygon has the press release summary here. Sega hasn’t elaborated on the extent of what it’ll allow and won’t, but it could lead to some interesting creations.
– The latest YouTube Teens React video is on Super Metroid! Check it out here. Only one teen out of six (I believe) can manage to beat the second boss, the Chozo guarding the bombs. Also, if you missed it, we recently covered Super Metroid.
– From Chris Reed at The Cheat Sheet, eight SNES games you have to play!
– Sarah Gish of The Kansas City Star looks at some of the cool bars with video games in the city.
– There is a really cool looking Nintendo 64 anthology book on Kickstarter. Check it out here!
– From Jeff Grubb at Venture Beat, what’s the current status of Atari? Well, seemingly, it’s mostly a patent troll company. They’re claiming that they own the trademark for “haunted house” in video game titling. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2013, and now, it only employs 10 people who mostly work to protect the company’s legacy value.
– Aubrey Sitterson of Geek.com has 11 games that “secretly made the Sega Saturn a great console.” While I wouldn’t agree that the Saturn was great, it was a good system, and it unfairly gets lumped into the Virtual Boy / 3DO / 32X graveyard sometimes.
– Breaking, important news! Video game henchmen plan meetup around explosive barrels! Read more here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– According to Moby Games, Data East was founded on April 20, 1976. The company was one of the early arcade producers, making games like BurgerTime, Cobra Command, Joe & Mac and past YPB show topic Shadowrun. They also did more than a dozen different pinball games, most based on TV shows. However, by the mid-1990s the company’s popularity and series had faded, and their last game came out in 1999. (Revive… Sosei, an adventure game for the Dreamcast, was Japan-only in October 1999. Zombie Revenge, an arcade and Dreamcast release, was the last North American release, seemingly.)
– In 1982, Pitfall! came out for the Atari 2600. It was probably the very best game ever released at the time, and topped the Billboard charts for 64 weeks. The commercial also had Jack Black in his first role.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Your Parents Basement 