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.
Vidya Game News – April 14, 2016
– The Tumblr account Super Mario Broth highlighted a rare Super Mario Bros. 3 animation this week – The Hammer Bros. suit sliding. You normally can’t slide in the suit in the game, so you have to do it in this one stage.
– Also in the category of Super Late Easter Eggs, a bald guy in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! reveals when to throw punches to knock out Piston Honda and Bald Bull. Read about it on Reddit here.
– In advance of the release of Star Fox Zero on April 22, there is a comparison of Corneria across the different versions. And hey, check out YPB’s Star Fox episode here!
– Nerdist and a bunch of other sites had the Player Piano cover of the moon theme from DuckTales. It’s the hot game that got one out of one DuckTale from Todd on one of our first shows!
– From TechTimes, Mark Lelinwalla looks at the five console generations Kobe Bryant has spanned. Also from TechTimes, Dianne Depra has a cool preview piece on a neat new book, The Art of Atari. Some really good images here!
– And again on TechTimes… Quinten Plummer has a cool article on how the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois managed to revive a prototype Beavis and Butt-Head game that only had 12 copies made. The secret? Cannibalizing a 3DO.
– OC Weekly has a story on Sega Genecide, a cover band. Headline: “Sega Genecide eat, breathe and shit 90’s cover songs.”
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Not quite today, but on April 13, 1992, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past came out in North America. It continued the wildly popular series, and it was a bright, vibrant 16-bit game. Per Wikipedia, it sold 4.61 million copies, good enough for fifth on the platform.
– On April 12, 2001, Big Ape Productions released The Simpsons Wrestling for the PSX to pretty miserable reviews. Of course, if you’re looking for a good Simpsons game, or want to hear about some of the horrible ones, check out our previous show!
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 27, 2015
I never actually saw a store that sold this by itself…
School is unfortunately back in session in many states, but hey, that doesn’t mean everyone has to leave the comfort of their parents’ basement! Keep cool and read some of this here news:
– Out this week is the Mega Man Legacy Collection, which has gotten a rave review from IGN and other sites. It’s a collection of various Mega Man games, faithfully emulated and with new features, for the PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
– From Fortune and tons of other sites, Shigeru Miyamoto says Nintendo is open to making more movies with its IP. It’s not like they could do any worse than Super Mario Bros…
– In other Nintendo news, they’ve put release dates on a bunch of their 2015 games, including Star Fox Zero, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash and Xenoblade Chronicles, according to Gamespot.
– Garrett Martin of Paste has a full ranking of the 18 games that use the NES Zapper.
– Konami has a ton of great franchises, but oddly, most of them have gone dormant. Ryan Lambie from Den of Geek looks at 14 of them here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Disgaea: Hour of Darkness came out for the Playstation 2 in 2003. The games were unique because they featured tongue-in-cheek humor, references that constantly broke the fourth wall – like recurring boss named Midboss – and ridiculous training, like being able to get your characters to level 9999 and stats in the millions. The series has now spanned to nine games, with the 10th (Disgaea 5) scheduled for release on Oct. 6 in North America on the Playstation 4.
– Also in 2003, SoulCalibur II was released for Playstation 2 and Gamecube.
– In 1992, Super Mario Kart came out, and in 1994, EarthBound came out… In Japan.
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 – June 18, 2015
Box art, from FF6 (top) and FF3 (bottom).
Tons of new news, with the yearly E3 conference happening in Los Angeles this week! Scouring the web and Google Alert for some of the noticeable reboots, retreads and re-releases, along with the usual odds and ends…
– Square might not be done with just the announced Final Fantasy VII remake. According to the director of that PS4 remake, he’s also interested in redoing the fifth and sixth installments. (The box art in this post comes from a review of the games here.)
– Piggybacking on the interest from our last show, clearly, Nintendo has announced that Star Fox Zero will be out this holiday season for the Wii U. Game Informer has an interview with Miyamoto, and like some other interviews from the past month, he says it’s unlikely Star Fox 2 ever gets a proper release. Per most reviews of Nintendo’s E3 performance, they’re paring back on their Wii U offerings, expanding their 3DS array, and not talking about their console-after-Wii.
– From CNET, a gamer proposes to his girlfriend by hacking The Legend of Zelda.
– Also from CNET and their E3 coverage, Shenmue 3 looks to be a reality after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The series debuted in 1999, and the sequel came out in 2001.
– And yet another interesting CNET article, this one from Danny Gallagher on AI programs playing Super Mario World.
– Atlus says Persona 5 is still scheduled for a 2015 North American release, despite widespread layoffs at parent company Sega.
– From Super Compressor, 14 things in your parents’ basement worth serious money.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
… Actually, not much happened, unless you have deep, resounding love for games like Cruise Ship Tycoon and Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection, which came out in 2003. The most “significant” game release is probably Neverwinter Nights in 2002.
Game history info from Moby Games.
Your Parents Basement 