Blogger Archive: MetalFRO
[img width=315 height=320]http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/2/8/3/22283_front.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQs. This was a game even your grandmother could love. Every video game console has at least one game that defines it. One title that, above any other, people associate with it. For modern consoles, it's often a launch title that soars above the rest in quality, or a later game that is exclusive to that system. Usually, it's a great game that is universally hailed as something special. For early consoles, that game often happened to be the pack-in title, i.e. the game that came with the system when you bought it. In the case of the Game Boy, that game was Tetris.
Continue reading Tetris, 1989
[img width=320 height=285]http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tmnt/tmnt_files/tmnt-gb-us-cover.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from Hardcore Gaming 101. Now you're playing with power - Turtle Power! 1990 was a fabulous year for Peter Laird, and Kevin Eastman, creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters. They saw the 4 intrepid heroes at the height of their popularity. The comic book was selling, the cartoon series was all the rage among adolescent males, and the live-action movie starring the turtles came out and became the most successful independent film of all time. In addition, TMNT the action figures were selling well, and as such, "Turtle Mania" was in full swing. Pizza Hut even did a TMNT-themed promotional tie-in where they did a concert tour of guys in rubber Turtle suits singing and dancing to 80's rock called the "Coming Out Of Their Shells" tour, complete with pay-per view performance and VHS, and audio cassette. One might even go so far as to say that the 4 turtles had over-saturated the market by that point.
Continue reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, 1990
[img width=320 height=285]http://www.mariowiki.com/images/thumb/f/f4/Dmgdqa.jpg/538px-Dmgdqa.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from the Super Mario Wiki. When did Pauline become a brunette in a red dress, instead of a blonde in a pink one? The Mario canon is a confusing one, indeed. Donkey Kong, sometimes referred to as Donkey Kong '94, or Game Boy Donkey Kong, is a re-imagining of the original 1981 arcade smash. I say a re-imagining because, though the game includes the original 4 levels of the arcade game, it also includes an additional 97 (!) levels beyond that, taking place over the course of 9 "areas", comprising of stages in multiples of 4. It's an ambitious move for Nintendo, considering that it comes over a decade after the original game's release, and a solid 8 years after the incomplete NES port of the game. Despite the original titles modest graphics and sound, can that successfully translate to the small Game Boy screen? More importantly, can Nintendo devise that many levels that are worth playing through? The answer to both is, unsurprisingly, yes.
Continue reading Donkey Kong - 1994
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