After much delay, it’s now time for me to talk about the games from this year’s E3 that caught my interest. Specifically, I’m referring to titles that I wasn’t already sold on coming in to the event (like Uncharted), or that were announced at the event (like Hitman: Absolution).
E3 2011 – Ubisoft Press Confrence Round Up
I actually uploaded this on Thursday, but I didn’t get a chance to properly get a blog post up for this until today. Here’s my thoughts on Ubisoft’s E3 Press Briefing, and the horror that was Mr. Caffeine. So, let’s make like Wayne’s World and go Doodlo-doodlo-doodlo.
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #52
It’s been almost a month since my last Where I Read, so to make up for it here’s my Where I Read for Nintendo Power issue #52 for September of 1993. This issue’s cover game is Super Mario All Stars, with Mario jumping and hitting a block. However, the inside includes guides for Final Fight 2, Rock & Roll Racing, and Enix’s RPG The 7th Saga. Let’s read on, shall we? Read more
Quality Control – Goof Troop
Capcom’s 16-bit Disney licensed games are widely regarded as being among the best platformers in the 16-bit console generation. However, of the successful titles, like Mickey Mousecapade, that they released, lurking in their shadow was a little game called Goof Troop, which has remained fairly obscure to this day. The reasons for the title’s obscurity are two-fold.
- It was based on a show that was only broadcast on cable (Goof Troop aired only on the Disney Channel).
- While all the other Disney licensed games were platformers, Goof Troop was a top-down puzzle game. Read more
Where I Read: Nintendo Power #51
We have another recap of an issue in Nintendo Power, just in time for a significant, coinciding event in the modern video game industry.
The issue is Nintendo Power #51, for August of 1993. Our cover game for this issue is Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduces the ability to have same character matches in the game, as well as the ability to play as the bosses, coinciding nicely with the release of Capcom’s latest fighting game to include Street Fighter characters – Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
In the letters column for this issue we have a letter from a 47 year-old chuck driver, looking for assistance with Blaster Master, and who has also been having problems with Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy. According to the writer, he got so frustrated with the game, that he nearly ran over his Game Boy with his big-rig until another driver stopped him (I presume this was at a truck stop). The writer discovered that the other driver had been stuck in the same spot in the game he was, and he got some instructions about how to get past that part of the game. I have to admit that I never thought of big-rig drivers as hardcore portable gamers before, but now that I’ve been exposed to the concept, I’m not too surprised. I wonder if the portable game systems are still popular with long-haul truckers today, and if so, I wonder what systems are popular? Read more
Quality Control – Mighty Final Fight
On multiple occasions, I’ve heard the expression mentioned that restrictions breed creativity. Sometimes that doesn’t hold true. My last Quality Control pick, Raging Fighter, was a great example of this. The game was a fighting game that just didn’t hold up well on what was essentially a 4-bit hand-held system. Such is the opposite with this Quality Control pick, Mighty Final Fight, from Capcom for the NES. Capcom was basically given the task of porting the SNES (and arcade) classic brawler Final Fight to an 8-bit platform. I would say that they succeeded admirably.
Now, to be fair, Final Fight wasn’t a particularly complex brawler – and the brawler genre in general doesn’t have as much complexity to it as fighting games do. That said, Capcom handled the port very well. As the game couldn’t support the same size of sprites that the original game used, characters are instead depicted in a “Super Deformed” style. To tie in with the change in art style, the story has been altered to something more comedic. This in turn really helps to differentiate this version of the game from the original and give it a sense of identity.
Similarly to the original game, Mayor Mike Haggar‘s daughter, Jessica has been kidnapped by the sinister leader of the Mad Gear Gang, who has gone absolutely gaga for her. Haggar, Jessica’s beau, Cody, and Cody’s friend and training partner, Guy (yes, Guy is in this game), must fight through all the members of the Mad Gear Gang before the wedding ceremony. The game only has a single player mode, instead of an alternating two-player mode like in Double Dragon. However, similarly to Double Dragon, only two enemies can be depicted on-screen at any one time, making crowd control a little simpler.
The game also borrows the sort of “leveling” system used by Double Dragon, among other similar games, of gaining experience points by defeating enemies, which in turn, in theory, unlocks additional moves. I say in theory because, really, you can only unlock one move, and that’s at level 4. Each fighter has a special move that can be unlocked, and is performed by hitting the attack button and a direction on the D-Pad. This move gets you a little extra XP if you defeat an enemy with it. However, by this point you really don’t need to level up any further and the move itself does less damage on average than your regular combo, and you gain no other benefits, like life bar increases or anything else). Power-ups are also moderately scarce, as are weapons (there’s one dropped weapon in the whole game, at the obligatory Elevator level).
All in all, this is a decent classic style brawler, and I would say that I like it better than the original Final Fight, blasphemy though that may be. I would recommend picking it up, if you can find a copy, either as the NES cart or in the GBA collection “Capcom Classics Mini-Mix”.
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #50
Just in time for the 25th Anniversary of the US launch of the Nintendo Entertainment system, my Where I Read for Nintendo Power has reached issue 50, for July of 1993. It shouldn’t be a surprise to say that this issue’s cover game is a notable one – Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Game Boy – the first portable outing for the series.
Our letters column for this issue has an interesting question – when they added two more face buttons on the SNES controller (in addition to the two shoulder buttons), why did they call them X & Y instead of C & D? According to the official answer, it comes from CAD, and relates to the fact that X & Y are the secondary buttons, as opposed to the main A & B buttons. I don’t know enough about CAD to say how definite that is (aside from X & Y being the axis for any two-dimensional plane), but it sounds good. If anyone who knows more about CAD wants to chip in with more information on what could be referenced here, I’d appreciate it. We also have a couple good-bad Legend of Zelda jokes, from Alex in Victorville, CA:
Q: How did Link help his team win the basketball game?
A: He used his hookshot!
Q: What did Zelda tell Link when he couldn’t unlock the door?
A: Triforce. (Get it, “try force” – I’ll get my coat)
WWF Royal Rumble Guide
So, just to get the age of game across here – it still has WWF in the logo instead of WWE. It’s got the Big Letter logo instead of the Scratch logo. The Undertaker has a goatee only, no moustache. Also, it bears mentioning that of the five wrestlers pictured here – Bret Hart, The Undertaker, Rodney “Yokozuna” Anoai, Curt Henning, and Scott “Razor Ramon” Hall, two are dead (Henning and Anoai), one is out of the business due to being an alcoholic (Hall), one basically can’t actively wrestle after having too many concussions (Hart), and one’s retiring Real Soon Now (The Undertaker). Hey, at least it doesn’t have Chris Benoit in it, if it did then the game wouldn’t exist anymore. 😉
The game itself has four gameplay modes – single player career, tag team career, three-man tag, and battle royal. It’s interesting to note that when wrestlers use a chair as a foreign object, they hold it upside down. Of course, like most steel chairs on WWE programming, they can only withstand a couple swings before becoming unusable for anything really. It’s also interesting to note that while the game has a tag team mode, only two real “tag teams” are represented here – Mr. Perfect and Ric Flair, and Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon, and both those are situations where one wrestler was the other’s “bodyguard”, not that they were a regular tag team and neither team ever held the Tag belts. I bring thus up because earlier games usually had one tag team in it that had held gold, usually the Road Warriors/Legion of Doom, or occasionally Demolition.
We get a list of wrestlers here, and their signature moves – which is a new touch for WWE games. However, the game doesn’t include submissions, something that WCW’s first game did include. I don’t recall if this game includes rope breaks on pin attempts though. Still, from a feature standpoint, they’re behind their competition.
Run Saber Guide
This is a sort of run and slash action-platformer like Strider. We get maps of the all the stages before the last one, including boss strategies. Of note – according to wikipedia, the boss for level 2, a massive reclining undead woman, was originally just a massive reclining woman in the Japanese version, but Nintendo of America had them change it to avoid their “No Violence Against Women” policy – the same policy that lead to the stripper-riffic women from Final Fight being changed to transgender men in the US release of that game. Yeah, their priorities weren’t in the right place.
E.V.O.: Search For Eden Guide
Before Will Wright gave us Spore, we got this ambitious title from Enix for the SNES. Basically, you control a creature of your own creation, and earn Evolution Points by surviving, by eating creatures and so forth. Evolution points can be spent on various genetic mutations that will help you do better later on. For example, as a fish, you can evolve a lure similar to the lure of the angler-fish, to help draw in food.
Edutainment Games
We get a run down of various edutainment games as we approach back-to-school season. Several of these games, like the Miracle Piano Teaching System, have previously been covered by the magazine, and nothing is really in-depth.
Bubsy Guide
This game is a little interesting, as while the game was originally licensed when it was released on the SNES, the Genesis version was initially unlicensed (a licensed version was released later). We get maps for levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16 (the final stage). We don’t get any boss information though, it’s entirely possible that the game doesn’t have any bosses until the end, or that the bosses are on the levels we don’t get maps for.
We also get a gallery of the covers of all of the last 50 issues of Nintendo Power. Thus far I have to say that I like the cover of issue 2, the Castlevania II cover, the most. Our Nester’s Adventures strip covers TazMania and is has no useful advice at all.
50 Year Retrospective
This is, as it says, an in-depth retrospective. Apparently they consider the Castlevania II cover their “worst” cover, because it gave kids nightmares. Personally, I would say any piece of cover art good enough to cause nightmares would be a sign that it’s quality. Anyway, the official history here downplays the magazine’s role as a piece of advertising, instead describing it as a way to give a lot of information about Nintendo games for fans, and not including advertising as a way to avoid any awkward conflicts of interest, never mind that this is a house organ, and thus will probably skip on saying anything too negative about their products.
At the very least, they attempt to leave the American kusoge (shitty games) out of the magazine, and to be fair, with the Quality Control picks I’ve played, while some are bad, I haven’t seen anything as bad as Deadly Towers, or the far, far worse Dragonlance: Heroes of the Lance in the magazine, at least not very often.
While the Starfox comic continues, I’m still not going to cover it because it’s still not good.
Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Guide
So, this guide covers enough of the overworld map to get you to the first three dungeons of the game, and maps of those dungeons. That’s unfortunately it. Most other guides usually give a glimpse and maybe a few hints of what’s to come later, but this has none of that, unfortunately.
Gargoyle’s Quest II Guide
This is a sequel to the spinoff game based on Ghouls & Ghosts/Ghosts & Goblins. We get strategies for all the bosses right off, as well as a full two-page spread of the overworld map. We don’t get maps of the dungeons, but I’m okay with that. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded if, with Legend of Zelda, we had gotten no maps of the Dungeons, and just gotten a complete overworld maps and a few useful notes on the dungeons (for example, in this dungeon you can only defeat some enemies with jars, and you can only lift those jars after you find the Power Bracelet in this dungeon).
T2: The Arcade Game Guide
This is a port of the arcade light gun shooter… for the Game Boy. Yeah, no good can come of this. Mind you, I liked the arcade game, but light gun games really need to be played with a light gun – either one hard locked to the machine (T2, Operation: Wolf), or a couple on cables, possibly dual wielded.
The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt Guide
Moving to the NES, we have a licensed game based on the Addams Family animated series. I watched this show a fair bit as a kid, and I have to say that the animated format probably worked better for the Addams Family than the live action format, at least outside of big features like the two films with Raul Julia. We get a map of the hub area and notes on the individual levels, but no full maps.
Mighty Final Fight Guide
So, what do you do when you want to port one of the best fighting games of the last 5 years to the NES, when the system can’t handle it? You put out a Super Deformed version! Thus, we have Mighty Final Fight, a version of Final Fight with Chibi characters. Plus, it has a level up system, and we have Guy in the game! We get maps of the levels and notes on beating the bosses. Frankly, I like this game’s visual style, and I’m probably going to make it my Quality Control pick.
Bubble Bobble 2 Guide
Remember Bubble Bobble? Good. Now you’re getting more of it. We get notes on a smattering of levels from the game and their World’s bosses – 3, 11, and 15 in World 1, 21, 24 and 36 in World 2, 42, 45 and 59 on World 3, and after that is the final world.
We also get a mini-merch catalog, which includes the opportunity to get every single back issue of Nintendo Power for just $50. That’s actually a pretty good deal. There’s also a Member’s Only shirt, and the Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Adventures graphic novels.
Top 20
For our Top 20 this issue, Star Fox now holds the top spot on the SNES, bumping down Street Fighter II (original version) and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. On the Game Boy, Super Mario Land has once again been bumped off the top spot, and not by Metroid II. Instead, Super Mario Land 2 has claimed the top of the charts, pushing Samus and Kirby further down the charts. On the NES, Mario 3 retains the top spot, followed by the original Legend of Zelda (who has been on the Top 50 for the magazine’s full run), and Mega Man V. It bears mentioning that every NES Mega Man game is on the charts and every Metroid game released as of this issue is on the charts. We are missing Zelda 2 from the charts on that franchise, and the original Super Mario Bros and Super Mario World are absent from the charts from that franchise.
Now Playing
Now for the best of the rest. Ultima V: the False Prophet is getting a SNES release. Unlike the PC games you can’t carry your character over from the last game. Seika is releasing Super Turrican, JVC has the Wizardry clone Dungeon Master, There’s also a Game Boy game based on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Pak Watch
As my favorite wrestling commentator, Jim Ross, is fond of saying, business is about to pick up. Capcom is preparing to release Street Fighter II Turbo, with the ability to play as the bosses, as in Champion Edition, plus a speed boost. However, Midway has their own major fighting game on the way, albeit in a bowdlerized fashion – Mortal Kombat. By bowdlerized, I mean that many of the finishing moves have been toned down, though the people writing this column attempt to downplay this – and fail. Ultimately, this game, more than Sonic vs. Mario, is what truly divides the Genesis vs. SNES camps.
Konami also has a fighting game of their own, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters. This one also has its own differences between the Genesis and SNES versions. The SNES version has more characters from the animated series (like Bebop and Rocksteady), while the Genesis version includes more characters from the comics (like Casey “10 Minutes For High-Sticking” Jones). Finally, Capcom is taking Mega Man to the next level with Mega Man X for the SNES.
Finally, for my Quality Control pick. While Super Turrican in the Now Playing section caught my eye, I’m going to go with Mighty Final Fight.
Quality Control – Raging Fighter
For this review of Raging Fighter for the Game Boy, I have to admit that I didn’t get into the game as much as I’d like. By “get into the game” I don’t mean get interested in the game, as much as I mean make progress in the game.
For those unfamiliar with the title, and there probably are a lot of you, this game is a fighting game for the Game Boy, published by Konami. In the game you play one of several martial artists, who beat each other up in a martial arts tournament. I can’t really put a premise to this game, because, even though this game has a “Story Mode” on the menu, there’s no story to speak of in the game. The story mode can best be described as a 3-on-3 endurance match. You play as the three good guys, and your opponent has the three bad guys. You fight the bad guys, and as you beat one, your exact health amount you have at the end of that round carries over to the next round, where you fight the next member of their team. Now, if the fighting was good, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. However, the fighting isn’t good.
Now, I’m a fan of fighting games. I’m not great at them, and I’ll certainly never be able to play them at the tournament level. Still, I enjoy them nonetheless. So, while I’m not necessarily capable of doing high level play, I’m not exactly a button masher, and I can usually figure out some sort of technique, even if I can’t work a character’s special moves. The problem is, even at its easiest difficulty, Raging Fighter isn’t particularly friendly. There are special moves, but it’s not clear how to use them, as there’s no move list in the game (which isn’t surprising), nor is there any sort of move list online, or even, for that matter, in the Nintendo Power article I discussed in the magazine’s last issue.
The character design is fairly generic. Aside from the token woman, and the token fat guy, everyone else pretty much looks like “generic character from Fist of the North Star“. It doesn’t help that the characters all seem to control the same – sluggishly and not very responsively. Except, of course, for the computer, which has no problem pulling off multiple slide kicks in a row or deftly jumping over the one projectile attack I was able to pull off (which, while it used the standard Fireball motion, was also sluggish enough that it shouldn’t have been difficult to jump over – unless, of course, you were the player).
It doesn’t help that there isn’t particularly any sort of concept of “interrupts” in this game. If you’re unfamiliar with fighting game theory, and “Interrupt” in the context of a fighting game it’s when your move interrupts their move animation. For example, in Mortal Kombat 1, the move animation for Raiden’s torpedo move could be interrupted by a carefully timed uppercut. There’s a lot more to this, related to character’s hitboxes and other things, but that’s a matter for a dedicated fighting game forum. The point of the matter is, though, you cannot interrupt opposing characters moves. In Street Fighter, you can break a hurricane kick attack with a dragon punch, a fireball, or even just a well-timed regular attack, if you know what you’re doing. In Raging Fighter, all you can do is turtle.
Other than this, if you find someone else who has this game, and you still have your Game Boy system Link Cable, you could, in theory, get in a two-player match. There’s also a single player tournament mode, and by tournament mode I mean it’s a ladder ala Mortal Kombat. However, I made very little progress there as well, and I really didn’t find it very interesting.
Ultimately, I cannot consider this game as being worth the hype. If you’re looking for a fighting game, there are better fighting games available for current or even earlier gen handheld systems. And, to be absolutely honest, did you seriously think a two-button fighting game could turn out well?
Building the Perfect Retro Game Podcast
With its next episode, one of the Internet’s best retro game podcasts, Retronauts, is coming to an end. This leaves a bit of a void, as I can’t think of a lot of truly great retro game podcasts out there. Destructoid’s Retro Game Podcast, which was okay, but not great, has ended. IGN’s retro game podcast is similarly over. However, I can still think of demand for podcasts in this field, and even material that the Retronauts themselves haven’t covered yet (if only retro Wrestling video games). So, with that in mind, I’ve put some thought to the concept of what made Retronauts great, and what other podcasts (or new retro game podcasters) can do to meet or exceed the standards set by Retronauts. Read more
Where I Read – Analog Computing #1
Having run out of issues of EGM for now, it’s time for something completely different. Specifically, we’re shifting focus from gaming consoles to computer gaming, with Analog Computing Magazine. For those unfamiliar with this magazine, it focused on computing on the Atari 400 and 800. Why am I picking this magazine? Well, because the first computer I ever used was an Atari 800, so Atari computers hold a special place in my heart over the Commodore 64. Fear not though, once I’ve gone through this magazine, I’ll see if I can find an old Commodore magazine and give that a run through – particularly since Commodore’s history is interesting in its own right. Read more
Quality Control – Kendo Rage
Kendo Rage is a bit of an odd duck, or perhaps rather an ugly duckling. The game takes the action-platforming style of the Valis series, gives the game the sense of humor (both in terms of tone and in terms of level and monster designs) of the Parodius series, and the persistent timer of Prince of Persia, and it kind of works. Read more
Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #104
I’ve found one more gap that I can fill in my Electronic Gaming Monthly Recaps – with issue 104 for March of 1998. Our cover story for this issue is Yoshi’s Story for the N64. This issue also has the absolute dumbest ad for Klonoa ever – in that it deliberately tries to draw a connection between the main character of the game and blood-borne pathogens of the sexually transmitted variety. Yeah. Read more
Video Game Review – Guitar Hero: Van Halen (PS3)
Just to get it out of the way. I love Van Halen in general. Both the David Lee Roth era and the Sammy Hagar eras of the band both had some amazing songs which I absolutely love… and let’s just pretend that the Gary Charone era didn’t happen. So, when I heard about this game, I was looking forward to the game with great anticipation. Then I learned that there wouldn’t be any representation of the Sammy Hagar era on the album because the band was currently touring with David Lee Roth, and my interest waned a little bit. Then the track listing came out and I found that they were taking the same take of mixing Van Halen songs and songs by other bands, like they’d done with Guitar Hero Aerosmith. That caused my interest to wane a little bit more. Then I found out what songs they were including, and any plans I had on buying the game when it came out (or pre-ordering Guitar Hero 5 to get the game free) were canceled.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t want to play the game. This just meant I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get it. So, now I’ve finally played it, and while I had some fun, this really isn’t the Van Halen band game I wanted. Read more
Video Game Review – Guitar Hero: Metallica (PS3)
A while back, I went out on a limb and said that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was superior to Guitar Hero III. I’ve now had an opportunity to play the second band focused Guitar Hero game, and while I enjoyed it, it encountered some of the same problems that Guitar Hero III had. Read more
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #47
We continue on with the Nintendo Power recaps with issue #47 for April of 1993. Our cover story for this issue is Starfox, after it played second fiddle to Tiny Toon Adventures last issue. Our letters column this issue has a bunch of letters asking the question of what column they’d like to get rid of, and what they’d like to replace it with.
Overall, most of the readers of the magazine would like to get rid of George & Rob’s column. I’m not too surprised – the column’s reviews aren’t necessarily as useful as the reviews in, say, EGM – though they’re more useful than the reviews in GamePro. A couple readers also suggest dropping the comics, Player’s Picks and Power Players. I kind of like Power Players. While I don’t report on the high scores listed in the magazine, when I was reading issues of Nintendo Power as a Kid, it always interested me. It was like the high score list on arcade machines, except with people from all over North America, instead of just local people. It provided me as a player with something to look up to. As it is, I wouldn’t mind if such leader-boards were built into emulators that supported high scores like, say, UberNES or, alternatively, on Wii’s Virtual Console. I wouldn’t mind dumping Nester’s Adventures though. Read more
Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #66
I’ve finally found another issue of EGM to fill one of the holes in my back catalog, with issue #66 for January of 1995. Our cover story for this issue is Killer Instinct, and is looking positively ’90s-licious. We also get a look at the Virtual Boy on the cover. This issue’s editorial column is about the Virtual Boy, and to be short, Ed Semrad is not impressed with it, in terms of game quality, display quality, or quality of the controls.
Letters
This issue’s letter of the month is a cautionary tale to warn people not to let bug spray get on your compact disks – told from one reader who accidentally got bug spray on her Sega CD game, which ruined the game. We also get a question about upcoming CD based fighting games – they mention Samurai Shodown CD, Fatal Fury Special CD, Eternal Champions CD, and Brutal.
We also get a letter from a writer who wants to make his own Turbo Duo games, and thus continue to provide support for the system. Unfortunately, doing such a thing would be incredibly expensive, both in terms of chip manufacture, and in terms of licensing fees, and learning Japanese well enough to translate the documentation. Read more
Quality Control – Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!
With my last Nintendo Power Recap, I picked Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose for my next Quality Control pick. This was in part because I was a fan of the Tiny Toon Adventures TV series, and partially because I kind of liked the last Looney Tunes game I played, Death Valley Rally. So, we’ll see how well this game holds up. Read more
Book Review – Game Over
As I’ve mentioned in my review of The Soul of a New Machine, I enjoy reading about the history of the computer industry. As you’ve probably gather from all my magazine recaps, I also enjoy learning about the history of the video game industry. Consequently, I enjoy books that fall in the category where the two Venn diagrams overlap. They do so with the book I’m reviewing this week, Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved your Children. Read more
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #46
So, I’m continuing on with the Nintendo Power Recaps with issue #46, for March of 1993. I’m also posting this issue of my recap on GiantBomb.com. Hello to you all! Anyway, this issue’s cover game is Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose. All things considered, the cover art for this issue is a little better then some of their earlier cover art for licensed properties (as opposed to licensed photographs).
Our letters column actually has stuff that’s worth mentioning this time. We have a letter asking about a code to play as the bosses in Street Fighter II (code? No. hack using a Game Genie or Pro Action Replay that they can’t talk about? Yes!) There’s also a letter about the trading cards that they have at the back of each issue that I haven’t been talking about (because it doesn’t really matter), and a letter about how you can get a job as a game counselor – live in Seattle, be over 16, have great skills at video games, and have better skills at communicating what you’re doing. Read more
Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #21
After a little break to get some schoolwork done, I’m going to carry on with filling one of my gaps in the EGM recaps. This issue is issue #21 for April of 1991. The focus of this issue is on 16-bit systems, from Nintendo, Sega, and NEC. The Editorial column for this issue focuses on Sony and Nintendo’s announcement that they working on an optical drive for the SNES, one we all know never pans out, and ultimately leads to the development of the PlayStation.
Letters to the Editor
We get letters applauding EGM’s staff’s prior articles on the TurboGrafx-16, as well as a question about how they got their screen shots of Darius Super in a prior issue – they snuck them at a convention, how else? There are also letters about other magazines running tricks and news stories that they ran first, which they’re flattered about. Read more
My Electronic Gaming Monthly Retrospective
So, for the moment I’ve run out of EGM issues to recap – at least moving towards the present day. There are still some gaps in the backlog that need to be filled, and do intend to fill those once I get the issues. In the meantime though, I’m going to take a moment to look back at the history of EGM, and a look at my recaps. Read more
Quality Control – Cybernator
For this game I played through the first level.
The Premise
In the future, Earth is torn by a massive global war over limited natural resources. Jake Brain is a mecha pilot for the United Pacific States Marine Corps, and together with the crew of the Mech Carrier Versis, they do battle with the forces of the evil Axis for the safety of Earth. Read more
Where I Read – Nintendo Power #45
We’re continuing on with the Nintendo Power recaps with issue #45 for February 1993. Of note in the letters in this issue is one calling for the SNES getting Final Fantasy III, which they say we’ll get it as an adaptation of Final Fantasy V (sort of, we get Final Fantasy VI instead).
Cybernator Guide
Konami has a new mecha action game, and this is the guide for it. We get a map for the first stage, as well as notes and boss strategies for stages 2, 3, and four. Reading this, and seeing the plot summary – this feels like a Gundam game based on the original series. It’s probably not a Gundam game, but I suspect the plot similarities are deliberate for Japanese audiences. Read more
Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #122
This week we come to what will be the last of my EGM recaps, sort of – for September of 1999. I say sort of because there are some back gaps in my archive which I really need to fill, and once I get the issues to fix them, I will. However, as I’m not recapping any issues of EGM’s current run (the one that they’re currently publishing both online and in print), I won’t be recapping any issues chronologically after this one. Unless some get put up on Retromags. Have I confused you enough yet? Good.
It’s appropriate then that this issue’s cover story is the launch of the Sega Dreamcast, which is somewhat widely accepted as the last console to be considered “retro”. Now, eventually I suspect the retro game community to accept the GameCube and Xbox as being retro systems, but for now, the Dreamcast is the last retro console. Considering that this is the first console launch of the “next” generation, the EGM staff is understandably pumped. Read more