Vidya Game News – June 30, 2016
Image from MobyGames.
– The Nintendo 64 turned 20 last week, which led to retrospectives from plenty of places, like Nerdist and Tech Insider.
– The fine folks at Shmuplations are dong the lord’s work, as they’ve unearthed an old interview from developers on Super Mario Kart. You can read it here.
– The new Toejam and Earl game has gotten more funding, and it’ll see a console release! Read more about it in a piece by Brandon Orselli from Niche Gamer. And, check out our episode on the original!
– RZA will be doing some music inspired by old Atari games, which actually sounds kind of cool. Read more on Billboard here.
– Good news, everyone! Adventures of Mana, a 3D remake of the old Game Boy game Final Fantasy Adventure, is now out for the Vita. Read the release from Sony here. It’s the first game in the Secret of Mana series, which we covered in the past.
– From MCV, via Famitsu, the new Harvest Moon game for the 3DS is #1 on the Japanese sales chart. It’s scheduled to come out in America at some point in 2017.
– It’s short notice, but Nintendo is hosting a festival in Montreal this weekend! For more details, go here. And if you’d like to head Down Undah, there is an 8-bit festival in Melbourne later in July, according to Time Out Melbourne.
– Yougurtland is partnering with Nintendo.
– A Final Fantasy VII version of Monopoly is coming out in April 2017. It’s by Merchoid, and you can read more on Examiner.com here.
– A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for a “complete remake” of System Shock. Read more on the project page here.
– The producer of the Tetris movie now claims it’ll be a three-movie series! Yikes. Read more on Empire.
– The Angry Video Game Nerd re-visits Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, 10 years after he first covered it. Check out the video here. For James and Mike Mondays, they played Alex Kidd in Miracle World.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Star Fox 64 came out this day in 1997. And hey, we reviewed it! Check out our show here.
– On June 29 in 2000, Icewind Dale by Black Isle Studios was released by Interplay. It was a well-reviewed game based on Dungeons and Dragons.
– In 1996, Bruce Jenner’s World Class Decathlon came out for the PC. It was 20 years ago Jenner won a gold medal in the decathlon, so, that was kind of weird.
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 – 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 – January 8, 2016
Oh man… We took a bit of a news break the past few weeks, because of The Holidays and what not. And also, Steve is sicker than the Noid after eating Pizza Hut. Regardless though, he’s powering through to deliver the first vidya games news of 2016!
– Brad Fuller, the composer for classic games like Tetris and Donkey Kong has passed away. Develop’s Matthew Jarvis has the full story here.
– A Reddit dude posts cool images from his collection of odd gaming systems. Check it out on Imgur.
– Super Metroid is a lot of fun, and you can self-impose new difficulty challenges via sequence breaking. But if you’re a complete masochist, a new hack tilts the game on its side.
– Also in bizarre hacking news: Windows 95 now works on the 3DS.
– This week’s game for James and Mike Mondays (Angry Video Game Nerd) is Killing Time for the 3DO. As one of the 20 people who own a 3DO, of course I’m linking to it.
– From Nerd Reaction, you can buy your own Star Fox statue for “just” $79.99! Story is here.
– Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week. His SNES game was weird, and Tech Times’s Jason Serafino has a rundown here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Much like the motion picture industry, January can be a dumping ground for the vidya game industry. The most significant releases? Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law came out in 2008 for the PS2, PSP and Wii, and Total Eclipse came out for the 3D0 in 1994.
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 – December 3, 2015
“Get over here!” – Scorpion. And, uh… read these news stories.
– On our Shaq Fu episode, we talked about how development on the crowdfunded sequel was oddly quiet. Well, according to IGN and other sites, piggybacking on Shaq’s twitter, a release date might be announced today. (And to check out our episode, which was one of our favorites, go here!)
– Know a hipster who loves old SNES RPGs? Then the perfect gift for him might be a Mother 2 (Earthbound) soundtrack on vinyl, as first publicized by Carlos Cadorniga of the Anime News Network.
– What’s the Angry Video Game Nerd up to this Christmas season? Why, examining bad cover art, of course! And it’s probably not a surprise that the second game he features is Mega Man…
– A fancy Super Mario Bros. watch can be yours for just $18,000! Good times, good times.
– Grey Carter of The Escapist has a modern review of Myst, and he’s not all that impressed in the game except as a fossil.
– T3 Online has a really awesome and exhaustive piece on the Dreamcast, and they even open up the system and look at its guts!
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– On TV Tropes, there is a concept known as Early Installment Weirdness. This definitely applies to Duke Nukem II, as most people don’t remember it started as a platform game in 1993. Apogee was an awesome developer of platform games back then, though. Since then, they’ve changed names to 3D Realms and done way more FPS stuff.
– Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire came out 19 years ago, in 1996, for the Nintendo 64 by LucasArts. While the interface is clunky at times, it features a cool-named character (Dash Rendar!) and serves as a neat side story between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
– Yesterday, 14 years ago, Pikmin came out for the GameCube. It’s kind of a cult classic for Nintendo, in that it “only” sold about 1.1 million copies back in the day. It has spawned two sequels, but it remains a minor series for the Big N.
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 – November 12, 2015
“Over the centuries, mankind has tries many ways of combating the forces of evil… Prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun.” – Terry Pratchett.
– Remember a couple months ago, when some dudes claimed to have found a prototype of the Nintendo-Sony CD project? Well, Engadget has an awesome follow-up by Richard Lai, and the system actually works! The CD drive doesn’t function, but it’s backwards compatible with some SNES games. If you’re unfamiliar with the backstory, Nintendo and Sony were originally going to collaborate on a system, but Nintendo was allegedly uneasy with Sony’s dominance in the tech industry already and pulled out. This led to Sony creating the PSX.
– Also in “cool older game news,” the Genesis port of Duke Nukem 3D is now available worldwide for $39.99.
– Radiant Historia was an awesome RPG for the Nintendo DS that had a Chrono Trigger-like game element that allowed you to manipulate the timeline. Now, according to Nintendo Everything, the director is interested in making a sequel.
– On the latest UpUpDownDown podcast on YouTube, Xavier Woods and Curtis Axel played each other in “Super Tecmo Bowl,” a.k.a. Tecmo Super Bowl, which we played a few weeks ago.
– From Now Gamer, a neat feature on six games that pushed hardware to its limit. Included are Mayhem in Monsterland (Commodore 64), Under Defeat (Dreamcast), Street Fighter Alpha 2 (SNES), Conker’s Bad Fur Day (N64), Adventures of Batman and Robin (Genesis) and Solaris (Atari 2600).
– On James and Mike Monday (Angry Video Game Nerd) this week, they played Power Punch II, a bizarre sequel to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. For the NSFW video, click here.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Metal Gear Solid 2 was released for the Playstation 2 in 2001. It has since gone on to sell seven million copies, and it was one of the first to heavily involve cinematics with a shooting sort of game.
– In 2007, Super Mario Galaxy was released for the Wii. It was super well-reviewed and remains a beloved vidya game.
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 026 – Castlevania (1987)
Episode 026 – Castlevania (1987)
It’s the spoooookiest episode yet for our sweet baby boys, as this week in Your Parents Basement, the game is Castlevania from 1987! Not surprisingly, it’s very tough, but very fun.
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TIMESTAMPS
- 0:00 – Intro, which is The Miinibosses covering the main theme from ‘Vania. Their website is here, and they do a bunch of covers of old vidya game music.
- 43:15 – Emails. The boys talk about good games for kids, and more inappropriate things.
- 56:30 – Snifferoo. We are playing the absolute best licensed game of all-time, possibly, next week.
SHOW NOTES
– According to Price Charting, the original Castlevania has held its value very well. The loose cart goes for $21, which is high for a NES game. “Complete” sales (box and manual) average $76, and sealed new boxes range from $250 to $2,000, depending on when they go on sale. It is available on the Wii’s eShop. Symphony of the Night is on Sony’s online store. The other games in the range between $8 and $50 for the cart, up to several hundred for new copies.
– Various games of the Castlevania series have been fodder for the Angry Video Game Nerd, most famously, the second game. (Note: Very NSFW language.) He and his buddy Mike also played the Sega Genesis remake of the first game, Bloodlines. Also, past show subject Arino of Game Center CX played Castlevania 3.
– There are several Castlevania speedruns, but this one beats it in a little over 11 minutes.
– When it comes to the history of development in the Castlevania series, IGN has a good retrospective from February 2014 here. When it comes to the in-game canon history, the Castlevania Wiki is your best bet. Warning: It’s very tangled, as we mention on the show.
Your Parents Basement 