Vidya Game News – May 19, 2016
– As Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett types in his write-up, Sega’s game testing training videos were peak 1990s, right down to Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails background music.
– From Polygon’s Allegra Frank, a remake of cult classic Wild Guns is coming out for the PS4!
– In unnecessary video game movie adaptation news… A Tetris movie is in the pipeline, according to Deadline. And not a documentary about the game’s interested and tangled history, but a science fiction game. A discount film studio has picked up the rights to Atari’s Missile Command and Centipede, also per Deadline. Also, confirming long-standing rumors, Nintendo said it would look to re-enter the ole Hollywood business.
– What was the code name for the biggest heroin bust in Delaware’s history? Operation Duck Hunt, of course. Read more via The Sussex County Post.
– Nintendo Player has an awesome long read on the recently-unearthed Happily Ever After, a Snow White-based NES game from the early 1990s. The game itself is a generic, Nintendo Hard affair, but the story behind it is fascinating. Plus, the ROM has been made available for free online!
– From several sites, a retro 8-bit version of Monopoly, featuring Super Mario Bros., now has a sale slug on Amazon.
– Per Gamasutra and several other sites that got the press release, mod support for older Sega games caused them to sell 350,000 copies on Steam since April 28. For the details, click here.
– For James and Mike Mondays, the guys play Doom 64, which Steve remembers somewhat fondly from his childhood! If you didn’t have a high-powered PC back in the day, it was a fairly easy way to play the ole game. Also from that site this week, Mike and Bootsy play Pinball for the NES!
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 1997, Eurocom released the Midway arcade game War Gods for the N64. Because the system was so starved for games at various points, it was hyped for months in Nintendo Power, but it ultimately was just a mediocre fighting game.
– New Super Mario Bros. now isn’t, as it celebrated its 10th year on May 15. (Note: It’s still an awesome platformer for the DS, though.)
– For a brief history in time, people thought they’d get in shape via vidya games. On May 21, 2008, Nintendo came out with Wii Fit and the Wii balance board. Both the balance board and the Wii are now probably in your closet.
– The year after Wii Fit, Next Level Games dropped a remake of Punch-Out!! for the Wii. While it was well-received, it wasn’t the iconic game that the original was.
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 28, 2016
– From Ryan Divish and Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times, Nintendo is selling its majority stake in the Seattle Mariners. The valuation is $1.4 billion, and a follow-up story on how the deal was struck is here. The initial purchase price? Around $100 million, according to a January 1992 New York Times article by Lawrence Malkin.
– Kotaku has an excerpt from Alyse Knorr’s book on the making of Super Mario Bros. 3, and it’s an awesome read! Check it out here.
– Now out: Sega 3D Classics Collection, for the Nintendo 3DS. Games include Power Drift, Puyo Puyo 2, Fantasy Zone II and II W, Sonic the Hedgehog, Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force II, Altered Beast and Maze Walker.
– Pretty much every site on the ole Internet had a piece about the new NES adapter that lets you use some modern controllers.
– Nintendo has a Humble Bundle available until May. Highlights include Retro City Rampage and Citizens of Earth.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Historically, nothing prominent has come out on April 28, so… On April 29, 1998, Tekken 3 came out for the PlayStation. Released by Namco, it’s considered one of the absolute best games for the system, and one of the best fighting games of all-time.
– A little game called Grand Theft Auto IV came out on April 29, 2008. It made a bazillion dollars for Rockstar.
– Similarly: Mario Kart Wii came out in 2008 as well. It was a pretty good day for games.
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 7, 2016
– On Polygon and a bunch of other sites, Sega announced that it had finalized its acquisition of Atlus. As of now, operations aren’t supposed to change at either company as a result, except for Atlus helping in some North American localization for Sega games.
– Now Gamer has an interesting piece on the failed development of the M2, a follow-up to the 3DO, that never saw the light of day. Panasonic still spent $100 million on it though, and its tech made its way into some Arcade games. Read the piece here.
– Micah Mertes of The Omaha World-Herald has a neat story on a tech museum that had a “petting zoo” display for April 1, featuring old systems, typewriters and Tamagotchis.
– Mike Matei of Cinemassacre (home site of the Angry Video Game Nerd) has a video on the top 10 obscure NES asshole enemies. Check it out here! It’s NSFW and frustratingly accurate.
– From IGN and a bunch of other places, there is now a 24-carat gold NES available. (Warning: Autoplay video.)
– Jimmy Maher of The Digital Antiquarian has a great long read on how the NES muscled its way past the 1980s computing industry, thanks to a focus on fun games.
– Ryan Gibbs of The Young Folks reviews Atari Vault, the 100-game Atari collection that recently came out for a bunch of different platforms.
– From ABC News’ Avianne Tan, a grocery store created a Super Mario Bros. display from soda boxes.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– To circle back to a news roundup item… Not many games have historically been released on April 7, buttttt, Atlus was founded in 1986. If you’re into RPGs, you know them as the developers of Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei series of games, as well as quirky stuff like Etrian Odyssey and Radiant Historia. And, Rockin’ Kats! (And by the way, the director of Radiant Historia would love to make another one, per Siliconera.)
– Per Moby Games, in 2005 VIS Games filed for bankruptcy. Their most prominent games were a very bad version of Earthworm Jim 3D for the Nintendo 64, and State of Emergency, one of the few Rockstar Games that wasn’t a smash hit. However, it did inspire this awesome Lewis Black rant.
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 – March 10, 2016
– Cyan, the makers of Myst, have released a teaser trailer for their new game, Obduction. Check it out on their YouTube channel.
– There are a bunch of new screenshots and tracks released for the new Toejam and Earl game, per TechnoBuffalo.
– Amazingly, you can still play Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast! Well, if you’re willing to buy some modded games and/or systems. But, hundreds of people still do, and Jason Evangelho has the details on Forbes.
– Atlas Obscura’s Eric Grundhauser has an awesome read on the “treasures” offered in an old Atari contest for Swordquest. It’s long, but good. (For some of the neat-looking ads, including the one on this entry, go here!)
– Today’s “Shut up and take my money!” moment: Nintendo plans to open up a theme park at Universal Studios Japan. The Telegraph in the U.K. has a good write-up here.
– Bryan Cranston has been in a lot of commercials, including one for the Atari 2600 game MegaForce. Zap2It has a listicle here.
– From Allegra Frank at Polygon, and a bunch of other sites, the Coleco Chameleon is now dead.
– Per some mod makers, Microsoft wanted $500,000 to license Shadowrun for an X-Com 2 mod. Niche Gamer’s Carl Batchelor has a summary of the Twitter stuff here.
– On Kotaku Australia, Jason Schreier has a 20-year retrospective on Super Mario RPG.
– From The Wrap and a bunch of other sites, DuckTales is getting a revival! The first image is out, and it doesn’t look bad. Hopefully, it will lead to more splendid video games to review…
– Are you going to SXSW? (Sweet baby boy Huell is!) Well, they’re having a bunch of video game and tech-focused panels! Check out the list here.
– In re-releasing news, the rumored Valkyria Chronicles Remastered is now a reality for North American audiences! Per Sega and Sony, it’ll come out May 17, and feature upgraded graphics and full trophy support.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– On March 11, Mega Man & Bass came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2003, which is close enough for our purposes. It was the only main series game for the GBA, and was generally well-received.
– PlatinumGames’ MadWorld, an incredibly ultraviolent game, somehow came out for the Wii in 2009. It’s one of the few Wii games that is not kid or family-appropriate, as it is about a murder-related game show. Think of Smash TV, but gorier, and more of a beat-em-up.
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 043 – Street Fighter: The Movie (1994)
Episode 043 – Street Fighter: The Movie (1994)
This week in Your Parents Basement, in honor of the Oscars we’re watching one of the hammiest video game acting related performances of all-time! From 1994, it’s Street Fighter: The Movie, one of the last roles for Raul Julia. (And unfortunately, not one of the last films Van Damme did.) We also play a tiny bit of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game, a truly awful attempt by a Capcom subsidiary to mimic the Mortal Kombat usage of motion capturing.
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TIMESTAMPS
- 0:00 – Intro, which features two hammy parts from Raul Julia as M. Bison.
- 53:50 – Emails! What are our thoughts on collectible items in games? Have we played Hollywood Mogul? Have we seen The Wizard???
- 1:11:30 – Snifferoo. It’s our longest one yet! As next week, we’ll be covering Bonestorm, and Dash Dingo, and Larry The Looter, and Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge…
SHOW NOTES
– According to Price Charting, the Saturn and Playstation versions of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game go for a surprising amount of money! We’re talking $10 to $17.50 for the disc only, around $30 for the box and manual, and up to $200 for “new” condition copies. This is likely because it ultimately didn’t sell well.
– Copies of the actual movie, whether on Blu-ray or DVD, go for around $4. It’s also available for streaming for about $3, per Can I Stream It?
– The movie, although it made about $100 million, was a famously troubled production because of Raul Julia’s health. For the 20th anniversary of the film, Polygon’s Chris Plante had a great longread on it.
– Kylie Minogue is an incredibly famous Australian pop music artist. Also, thanks to Michel Gondry, she has one of the most awesome music videos of all-time, “Come Into My World.” (Pretty much all of Gondry’s music videos are really interesting.)
Vidya Game News – January 14, 2016
“Please adhere to the following rule of the city square: No swimming, No swearing, No laughing, No crying, No talking out of turn, No line dancing, No moose calling, No sword play, No pumpkin carving, No mummified cat juggling, No wallowing in your own self pity, No circumstantial evidence, No walking on the grass, No pancakes on Monday, No dessert until you eat your vegetables, No slapstick comedy, No balloon animals, And absolutely, positively, No barking like a seal. It upsets me.” – Secret of Evermore.
While following the rules, enjoy this vidya game news.
– Cool old game news, as Natsume has their own eBay store now. This includes new, boxed copies of things like Pocky and Rocky, Lufia II and Harvest Moon. Check it out here.
– Nintendo has joined legions of teenage girls and the year 2007, as they have a Tumblr account now, per Destructoid. Check it out here.
– Also from Destructoid, the fresh screenshots from the PS4 remaster of Valkyria Chronicles!
– From Kotaku ’Stralia and some other sites, a gamer totally broke Secret of Mana the other week during his speedrun. Also, the original game of the series, Final Fantasy Adventure, is getting a re-release on phones and iOS devices, per Polygon’s Allegra Frank.
– Also, publicized on the Mary Sue, NES30 has released a wireless NES controller that works with modern systems. It’s a bit pricey, at $36.99, but pretty damn cool.
– UK site Digital Spy has 11 horrible realities of old school gaming.
– If you live in Barrie, in Central Ontario, congrats! There is a new board game and video game group you can join.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 2002, NBA Courtside 2002 was released for the GameCube. As you can imagine from this game being included, it wasn’t a great day for releases, historically…
– The fourth installment of the second .hack series came out in 2004. Quarantine was a weird game, even by Japanese RPG standards. The games go for a pretty penny now, so if you see them, snatch them up.
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 – October 22, 2015
“COMMUNISM IS A LIE. DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM. DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE.” – Liberty Prime, Fallout 3. Fight the red scourge by enjoying this capitalistic vidya game news!
– Good news for Todd Brisket! The Sega Genesis version of Duke Nukem 3D is now available.
– On Digg, an amazingly “so bad it’s awesome” commercial for the Atari 5200. It features some legitimately hot, way too enthusiastic babes in bikinis! Check it out here.
– Pretty much every major tech site had some sort of piece on the 30-year anniversary of the NES, but Mashable had a neat retrospective on the 18 launch games for the system. Among them: Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Wrecking Crew and Clu Clu Land.
– Nintendo has opened up its development process slightly, and it’s also quietly sending out development kits for its next system, according to several different websites.
– From many different sites, but created by Sports Illustrated’s Cauldron, it’s the Colts bizarre fake punt recreated in Tecmo Super Bowl – view it on YouTube.
– There could be a new Valkyria Chronicles game in the works, as Sega has registered the name Valkyria of the Battlefield with the Japanese patent office.
– My Parents’ Basement is a new restaurant open in Avondale Estates, Georgia. For a review, click here, and the restaurant’s website is here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Grand Theft Auto 3 was released 14 years ago on the PS2, which was followed by PC versions in 2002 and Xbox in 2003. It was the first REALLY good game of the series, and as of 2011, it had sold more than 17 million copies, in addition to being the best-selling game of 2001.
– Fallout: New Vegas came out on Oct. 19 in 2010, but it’s close enough to include right here, especially since there weren’t many other significant games released on Oct. 22. Also, Fallout 4 comes out on Nov. 10. (Speaking of, the “PipBoy edition” went back on sale yesterday, and supplies lasted for five minutes, per Polygon.)
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 – August 13, 2015
Ah, August 13. At least it’s not a Friday the 13th, the day of OK movies and horrible games, historically. Looking at this week’s neat vidya game stories from around the web:
– Polygon is doing the lord’s work by ranking all 30 games in the Rare Replay classic remake for the Xbox One. You can read it here, but as a warning, it’s an intense load in terms of video and flash for some older machines. The piece is by Philip Kollar.
– In Vancouver, a dude has souped up his Hyundai with a Sega Genesis theme, according to an article in the Parksville Qualicum Beach News.
– From Cinema Blend, an article by William Usher on the weird and terrifying Sonic games.
– The latest Kids React video is on the Nintendo 64’s Pokemon Snap. It’s like Kids Say The Darnedest Things, without roofie pudding pops!
– Cameron Faulkner of Tech Radar points out that a line can be drawn from the development of the Dreamcast to the eventual integration of Windows 10 into the Xbox.
– Ever wondered about the video game industry in Ireland? News Talk has you covered.
– The movie version of DuckTales, The Treasure of the Lost Lamp, turned 25 in August.
– From Kotaku, the secret NES and SNES games on Seinfeld’s bookshelf.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Xena: Warrior Princess came out for the Game Boy Color in 2001, as did World Series Baseball 2K2 for the Dreamcast. As you can imagine, August is still slim pickings for decent video game releases. The next year, NCAA College Football 2K3 came out.
– In 2003, EA Montreal was announced. It formally opened in March 2004. They’ve mostly produced accessory and spin-off games for EA, excluding NHL 07 and Army of Two.
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 9, 2015
Holy crap, a Nintendo Playstation!
First, some important show-related news! You can now support us whenever you’re making a purchase on Amazon. Got something to buy? Do it via this link, and we’ll get a cut of your sale, at no extra cost to you. It can be for any goods, even non-vidya game stuff, and we’d definitely appreciate it! (Let us know if you make a purchase, and you’ll get a shout-out on the show. ❤ )
Surprisingly, even though we’re now in the dog days of summer, it was a great week for news. The biggest of which…
– A prototype of the 1991 collaboration between Nintendo and Sony on a CD-based system has been unearthed [right]. Polygon’s Brian Crecente had a good interview with the guy who found it, and that’s also where the picture comes from. That system eventually became the Playstation. (And to hype that Amazon thingy once again, there is an awesome breakdown of the rise and fall of Sega, and how Sony’s Playstation factored in, via Console Wars.) Some folks online aren’t convinced the prototype is real, but no one official has come out strongly to refute it.
– Speaking of failed Nintendo projects, Jon Fingas from Engadget details how Project H.A.M.M.E.R. became vaporware over the course of six years of painful development.
– Have you ever played Missile Command, Centipede or Asteroids and thought, “Man, wouldn’t this be cooler as a graphic novel???” … Okay, me neither. But hey, Dynamite Entertainment has you covered, via an article from UK Wired’s Matt Kamen.
– A neat feature, if you like readin’, from Matt Gander at Games Asylum. In “We’ve Got Issues,” he covers the Dreamcast magazine wars of the United Kingdom.
– I must begrudgingly give credit to Food and Wine’s millennial section for featuring “the ultimate bar setup for Nintendo nerds.” It includes Mario pipe shot glasses, Legend of Zelda ice cube trays and NES Zapper bottle openers.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– The Wizard’s Castle was released in 1980. Like many other games “featured” in this here blog in July, well, there really wasn’t much to choose from in terms of releases. However, the awesome CRPG Addict has an exhaustive review of the game available. It should not be confused with the wonderful Home Movies episode “The Wizard’s Baker.”
– Cryptic Studios was incorporated in 2000. They’re the makers of popular online multiplayer games City of Heroes and spinoff City of Villains.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games.
Your Parents Basement 