Vidya Game News – July 14, 2016
A sweet baby boy NES!
– Pretty much everyone shared this article with Steve on a mini-NES loaded with 30 games. My mini-review: Eh. It’s kind of steep at $59.99, and there’s no indication whether you can load more games on to it. (Note: Nintendo later told Kotaku that no, you can’t.) The HDMI hook-ups are nice, though. However, it feels like a missed opportunity for the Big N. By offering a viable alternative to emulators – like a device that allowed for game downloads, using your old carts and third-party support – they could have taken a nice chunk away from that market.
– A fox takes a Playstation controller from a house and drops it in a garden. Video!
– From Kotaku’s Patrick Klepek, and some other sites, the Saturn’s copy protection has finally been cracked.
– Tech Radar has an interesting list of the most disappointing games of the past 10 years.
– Because Nintendo needs more of your monies, there is now Mario-themed Hot Wheels cars. Read about them on Gaming With Swag.
– Ron Gilbert, the creator Maniac Mansion, talks to Deveop’s James Batchelor about his new game, Thimbleweed Park.
– Anna Pulley, the author of The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (With Cats!), loves Duck Tales.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– WWF War Zone came out for the Playstation in 1998. Developed by Iguana West and published by Acclaim, it got pretty decent reviews, but tends to be overshadowed by other, better games.
– This was a popular time of year for NCAA Football games to come out, as 2005, 2009 and 2011 editions came out between July 13 and July 15. Unfortunately, the series is now defunct, as EA Sports couldn’t come to an agreement with some NCAA members.
– Tales of Symphonia came out for the Gamecube on July 13, 2004. It was later ported to the PS2, and then an expanded version came out for the PS3. Namco is now up to seemingly 700 different Tales games, by the way.
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 – February 11, 2016
– Legitimately cool, but some NSFW text and language: Canadian punk band PUP has a ton of re-purposed vintage video game stuff for its music video of “DVP.” Check it out on YouTube! It’s definitely a must-watch for any old games fan.
– James Trew of Engadget has a cool retrospective on the Atari Lynx, which is one of those obscure systems from the early to mid-1990s.
– Are you in the Austin, Texas area on Feb. 21? You’re in luck! You can attend the NBA Jam Invitational Tournament at Empire Control Room & Garage. Find more details here. Also, from FOX Sports and several other sources, the University of Florida used NBA Jam graphics for a promotion.
– In “WTF Sega???” news, The Worldfolio has an interview with the president and CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc., and he said development continues on a live action-animation hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog movie. It’s tentatively scheduled for a 2018 release.
– A hat tip to Friend of the Show Hypermotard, as he passed along this Reddit AMA with Don Rawitsch, one of the co-inventors of The Oregon Trail.
– From the appropriately named This Is Why I’m Broke, it’s a Nintendo console lamp. The price of $95 seems a bit steep to me, but still, it looks pretty cool.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 2014, Square somewhat buried the third installment of Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns, by releasing it in this traditional “dead” period. The game itself is a bit of a mess, but it has some cool concepts, like the ability to hunt enemies to extinction and the setting of the end of the world. Like a lot of recent Square efforts, it’s undone by some meh storytelling in the third act.
– We typically don’t use Japanese dates for “anniversaries” on the old YPB blog, but for whatever reason, Feb. 11 is a banner day for the genre in Japan. In 1990, Dragon Quest IV came out, and as usual it did major business in Japan. It didn’t hit American shores until October 1992, and it was very much a “niche” title with seemingly only 15 copies released. A Nintendo DS remake came out in 2007 and 2008; it tends to be controversial, because while it cleans up some gameplay and “where do I go next?” aspects, it gives all of the characters ridiculous accents.
– In 1998, Xenogears was released by Square in Japan. It has a strong cult following to this day because of its unique RPG system with martial arts and robots fighting, along with a plot that focuses on religion, psychology and identity crisis. The reaction is still mostly positive, even though the second half of the game falls apart a bit for behind-the-scenes budget reasons.
– Square released Final Fantasy VIII in Japan in 1999. It was the second Final Fantasy game for the Playstation, and drastically different from the preceding game, and as a result it’s somewhat a black sheep in the series. Although it has sold more than 8.5 million copies, it’s been passed over for remakes in favor of VII and X, even though its story and “look” hold up somewhat better. It’s not really a game for Final Fantasy newcomers though, as the battle system takes some getting used to, and exploit knowledge on a second playthrough can let you become an all-powerful character within the game’s first few hours.
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 – September 3, 2015
While Kanye is running for president in 2020, the only one that’ll get our votes is President Ronnie. Are you a bad enough dude to save him? Prepare for the onslaught of political news with this much more appealing vidya game news:
– The aptly named Steven Lebron of Vice Sports has a lengthy interview with Tim Kitzrow, the voice of the NBA Jam series. Among the neat facts in the piece? He only got paid $900 for his initial voice work.
– The final tally for the first sale of Atari 2600 cartridges from a New Mexico landfill? About $107,000, according to Jacqueline Devine of The Alamogordo Daily News. The lot up for sale was 881 games, with the biggest earning being a copy of E.T., which went for $1,535.
– On YouTube, the iBookGuy has a cool series about how graphics and sounds work in older systems. This week’s topic was Apple and Atari, and you can see it here.
– Are you near central New Jersey at all? Cool! Then you can attend A Video Game Con – AVGC – which is being put on by Paul Solomine. The video game-focused event will have more than 60 vendors and 100 merchandise tables, as well as pretty much every old school console. Chuck O’Donnell of MyCentralJersey.com has a full article here.
– Jaz Rignall at US Gamer has an article on one of those obscure consoles you probably haven’t heard of, the Amstrad GX4000. It also gets into the odd European market, which was not dominated by the NES.
– In celebration of its birthday, Uproxx’s Nathan Birch has a long piece on some of the trivia aspects of the Super Nintendo. Amongst the tidbits: Nintendo never wanted to make a follow-up to the NES, most N64 games started as SNES projects, and yes, the system turns yellow over time.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Pretty much zero games of note came out in America, unless you’re really into NFL Head Coach 09 or Blade II (2002). And if you are, well, it might be time to reevaluate your life and your priorities.
– In Japan, the awesome cult game The Magic of Scheherazade came out in 1987. It didn’t hit American shores until December 1989, but it was a cool game that mixed adventure and RPG elements. And oh yeah – some game called Metal Gear Solid came out in Japan. It became kind of a big deal…
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 – July 16, 2015
Now this looks PRETTY legit.
It’s way too friggin’ humid in New England, but despite the condensation, we’ve prepared only the best news for you to enjoy today! Here are some of the stories about classic games and series we’ve culled from around the Interwebs:
– In last week’s “Four of a Kind” feature on Purple Revolver by James Brookfield, they cover bad celebrity endorsed games. The finalists? Shaq Fu, Chuck Norris Superkicks, Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City, and William Shatner’s TekWar, which apparently exists!
– Looking for some classic game recommendations? Nicholas Bitonti of The Detroit Metro Times has some good recommendations. While I don’t agree with all of them, they’re more obscure and interesting than the usual ones you see floating around the web, and cover a variety of systems.
– For the upcoming release of Pixels, Chauncey Alcorn of The New York Daily News has a ranking of his favorite 10 arcade games of all-time. Spoiler alert: Tekken 4 is way too friggin’ high, and while it’s nice to see Virtua Cop get some love, there is no Time Crisis on the list, which is just silly.
– Continuing with controversial #hottakes: Lizzy Finnegan of The Escapist has an article, “When the sequel is worse than the original.” Unfortunately, her examples are The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. and Castlevania, and I’d say that only the latter is actually bad.
– IGN.com’s Cam Shea has a good, longer read on the downfall of the SEGA Rally Championship game series. Warning though, a video autoplays from that link!
– On the Gradius episode, we mentioned that it was seen as Konami’s response to Namco’s classic Xevious. It’s probably for the best that an Atari 2600 port of Xevious never saw the light of day, because the recently unearthed prototype copy is pretty horrible. (Via Kotaku Australia’s Mike Fahey.)
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Again, it’s a fairly crappy day for video game releases, because it’s the summer. The Game Boy Color version of Dragon Warrior III came out 14 years ago. The original was an incredible RPG that featured multiple classes for the first time in a Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior game, and even better, you could change at-will once you reached a certain point in the game. However, it originally came out in Japan in 1988, and in June 1991 in North America, and didn’t have much of an impact in the states. On Amazon, GBC prices range from $19.99 (used) to $149.98 (new). Want a boxed copy of the NES edition? It’s only $1,499.95, with used copies starting at $47.95.
– One major studio game released in the summer back in the day: NCAA Football 2004, which came out in 2003 on July 16 for the Playstation 2, Xbox and Gamecube. The cover athlete was Carson Palmer, who is now 35, and the game sells for $1 or less pretty much everywhere in the god damn world.
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.
Episode 006 – NHL Series (1992 to 1997)
EA SPORTS! If it’s in the game, then it’s in the game. And this week, we played plenty of games in Your Parents Basement, as we did our best to tackle the many volumes of the NHL series by EA Sports.
While discussion mostly focuses on the two classics of the series, NHLPA 93 and NHL 94, we also do touch upon the other 16-bit editions. It’s possibly the longest running series between the two major consoles, with 95, 96, 97 and (surprisingly!) 98, the same year as the last NHL game for the Sega Saturn. (Sorry Sega, we don’t mean to give you so much shade.)
To download this week’s show, click here! You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes, or manually use this link. If you like the show, be sure to give us some starrrrssss. You can also follow us on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
This week’s show notes are short, because all three of us were out ramblin’ this week. (That’s also why there wasn’t a news post – There should be one as normally scheduled Thursday though!) Here are three links though: Baseball Mogul, a fun baseball simulation, and Out of the Park, which is insanely complex and only for the hardcore sports simulation junkies. And the snifferoo from last week came from this YouTube clip.
Episode 005 – NBA Jam (1993)
In this week’s Your Parents Basement podcast, the gang tackles NBA Jam on the eve of the NBA finals! Like all good sports programmes, they use the game to predict the final of the series, and they also talk about their other favorite basketball-based video games, like Scottie Pippen’s Puzzle Challenge.
To download this week’s show, click here! You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes, or manually use this link. If you like the show, be sure to give us some starrrrssss. You can also follow us on Twitter, or ‘like’ us on Facebook.
The show notes for this week:
- A download of NBA Jam for iOS devices is free this week. This is the On Fire edition we mention at the end of the game discussion. It’s quite splendid on my PS3, although I’m not sure how well it translates to iOS.
- At one point, Huell mentions a ranking of the “best” NBA Jam teams by Deadspin. You can find that here. It is humorously presented with absolutely no summary information for the decisions.
- Mike Iuzzolino’s NBA career was so short that his Wikipedia entry has a mention to his appearance in NBA Jam. It’s an unplanned career highlight!
- When NBA Jam was being remade for the Wii, ESPN.com ran a good interview with a producer from the game. He gets into how EA Sports procured the rights for making a new version of the game, which evolved from a prototype clone called Bounce. The Wikipedia entry on the series also has some information on the Midway and Acclaim split.
- Unfortunately, Scottie Pippen’s Puzzle Challenge and Space Jam Basketball do not exist (yet). However, Shaq Fu, Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City, and Barkley Shut Up and Jam! do absolutely exist. They are varying degrees of “meh,” although Sir Charles’ game is actually kind of OK… it just features no other NBA players, so why would you ever want to play it instead of NBA Jam? And shockingly, Pippen DOES have his own video game: Slam City With Scottie Pippen on the Sega CD. It is not well-reviewed.
- Finally, a fun list from a blog: The 11 Current NBA Players Who Have Never Dunked.
Your Parents Basement 