Vidya Game News – March 24, 2016
– Kyle Orland of Ars Technica has a good piece on why developers need to embrace emulation to preserve gaming history.
– Mike Fahey of Kotaku has a good read on how a planned Superman game instead sunk a game studio, Factor 5, the one behind Rogue Squadron.
– Steve Tilley of The Toronto Sun has a look at Batman games vs. Superman games, with the movie soon to come out. He comes to roughly the same conclusion that YPB did, in that Batman games are way better.
– Looking to signify to everyone who visits your home that you’re a massive geek? Check out this nifty Retro NES Shower Curtain!
– Atari has revealed the list of games in its upcoming Atari Vault collection. The 100 games can be seen here, on IGN.com.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 2003, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker came out for the Gamecube. It got universally great reviews, although some did gripe about the sailing aspects.
– The Playstation Portable came out in 2005. Amazingly, it was technically supported by Sony until being discontinued in 2014, and sold 82 million units worldwide. While it’s maligned because of its weird game format and somewhat flimsy nature, there are some good re-releases of the Persona and Final Fantasy series available for it.
– Speaking of the PSP… Crisis Core, an action-RPG prequel to Final Fantasy VII, came out for the system in 2008. It was actually a pretty solid game! Unfortunately, it did further complicate the timeline for the original game, which is now a mess.
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.
Your Parents Basement 