Blogger Archive: SirPsycho 
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**photo courtesy of theoldcomputer.com**
After finishing work on Beyond the Beyond, Camelot continued working with Sega on more Shining games for their ill-fated Saturn console. Camelot gaining their independence is a unique story from Sega's history; they're the only internal Sega studio that gained independence (not even AM 2 could pull that off). Camelot, and Sakuraba, finished work on Shining The Holy Ark and Sega released it worldwide in 1996. Camelot followed this with an epic three part series, all under the Shining Force III name. Only the first part in this trilogy was released outside of Japan, since the Saturn just didn't have the audience for continued support by the time the games started releasing.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Motoi Sakuraba Part 2: Man of Many Series
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Posted on Jun 10th 2015 at 12:00:00 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under Wolf Team, sega cd, mega cd, renovation, telenet, tales, namco, camelot, sonic, shining, star ocean, tri ace |
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RPG fans have likely heard much more of this composer than they realize. The stars aligned rather early in Motoi Sakuraba's composing career and he became one of the most respected Japanese composers of all time. However, he is one that is seldom discussed when compared to a few of his peers. Progressive rock has always been a massive influence on Sakuraba, and he was in a few bands of this style before he started composing for video games. He started his career by joining two other composers, Masaaki Uno and Yasunori Shiono at a a small, but talented developer called Wolf Team. At first, Wolf Team made games for popular Japanese PC systems of the time, namely the X68000 and MSX systems. The company made games of many different genres, and were known for making high quality games, and well done ports.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Motoi Sakuraba Part 1: A Pack of Wolves
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Super Mario 3D Land is an entry in the main series of Mario platformers. It was developed and published by Nintendo for their 3DS handheld console in 2011. This release was the first game in the Mario series to utilize stereoscopic 3D, which is what the 3DS's early years were all about! As usual, Nintendo's use of 3D on its own system is of the highest quality, and turning it on adds plenty of depth, which the level designers took advantage of throughout the game.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Super Mario 3D Land
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Help Wanted: Those who prefer to shoot first and ask questions later. Virtua City is looking to hire special detectives for missions that require fast trigger fingers. Recruits will be highly trained and put in great peril as they tackle the most dangerous missions to clean this city's dirty streets. Are you man enough to be a hero? Play as special detectives Michael Hardy and James Cools and take on a huge job that will clean the streets of futuristic, man-made Virtua City.
Again we travel to the lonely lands of Sega's oft forgotten home console, the Saturn. Virtua Cop started its life in the arcade and upon release became the latest in a long string of hits by Sega Amusement Machine Research and Development Department 2, or AM 2, in 1994. Virtua Cop is a genre defining game, as it broke new ground for on-rail light gun shooters by allowing far more interactivity with the enemies, based on where they are struck by a bullet. Different animations and scores come out for hitting different parts of the bodies of Virtua City's criminal scum. The graphics are also full, 3-D polygons, which is obviously what Yu Suzuki and crew used after the massive success of Virtua Fighter a year earlier.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Virtua Cop
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Steambot Chronicles, or Ponkotsu Roman Daikatsugeki: Bumpy Trot as it was originally named in Japan, is a Playstation 2 game developed and published by Irem in Japan, Atlus in North America, and 505 Gamestreet in a few countries in Europe. There is also a spin off on PSP named Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament, and an odd tie-in puzzle game on PS2 and PSP named Blokus Portable: Steambot Championship (one of only four games published by Majesco on the PSP in the USA).
A quick look at the back of the case of Steambot Chronicles shows the game being marketed as an open world RPG, and that is correct in a way. The game starts off as linear as any other RPG that's been made and then opens up. It's similar to the opening dungeon in Elder Scrolls, but drags on much longer. In this long opening sequence, you'll visit all three of the main towns, many of the back areas, and explore most of the world by the time it's completely opened up. Once an area is open, it may be visited at any time afterwards, and as a result, money can be hoarded this way.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Steambot Chronicles
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One of my favorite series on the original DS was Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Each game is serious and completely whimsical at the same time. The characters are over the top and blown out of proportion in some cases, which only serves to make the courtroom scenes incredibly memorable as all of these personalities clash. The mystery element means that the full picture of what has happened is never entirely clear to the player until the trial and the investigations leading up to the courtroom scenes slowly reveal the whole story. Things can also go down the rabbit hole at times. Its really a perfect blend of point and click puzzle adventure games with the narrative style of a visual novel, making the series stand out as the sum of its parts.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
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Psycho cracks a seal!
Today marks our first point v. counterpoint article where two of our bloggers will go head-to-head to debate one of collecting's hottest topics: the state of collecting sealed games. In the red corner we have the man with the plan, the author of this statement, the most handsome man in the history of the universe, SirPsycho! And in the blue corner, we have the second most handsome man in the same history, slackur!
Continue reading RF Generation Blogger Point v. Counterpoint #1: Sealed Video Games
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Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth game in the series of cooperative RPGs starring Nintendo's two main plumber brothers. It was released around the world in July and August of 2013. Dream Team was developed by longtime series developer AlphaDream, which has made every Mario & Luigi game. I have not played any games in this series since Superstar Saga, the first one, but I've heard about how great the two DS games are. So when I picked up my 3DS, I wanted to jump back into the series with the newest entry.
The story of Dream Team is about the team from the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toadsworth, and random Toads, all going on a vacation to Pi'illo Island. The island was once inhabited by talking pillow people and has now become a wonderful, tourist trap. It turns out that the Pi'illo people have actually been trapped in the Dream World by the evil Antasma. After freeing the Pi'illo Prince, Dreambert, Mario & Luigi go on an adventure around the island to help wake the Pi'illo and stop Antasma and his familiar allies.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
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Why does this exist? I understand educational games, but throwing in a huge, well-established character just seems like a lazy cash grab. A good educational game should be able to stand up on its own by mixing good teaching tools with fun. Mario's Time Machine fails as a teaching tool.
Mario's Time Machine was developed and published by The Software Toolworks for the Super Nintendo and MS-DOS. Radical Entertainment developed the NES port with Nintendo publishing this version themselves. When this game was released in the early 90s, it was not the first Mario themed educational game; it was preceded by Mario is Missing! (which had the same developer). As you might be able to discern from the title, Mario's Time Machine is a game meant to teach history. However, I find that as a teaching tool the game fails. As an adult who understands and knows the basic historical content presented in this game, it is extremely easy to get through and beat quickly. The basic gameplay involves you having historical artifacts with an attached document with information on it; this document has blanks in it that you must fill. As an adult, you'll likely know most, if not all, of the answers without thinking too much. However, if you're a kid, you may have trouble filling in these blanks. Other than context clues in the document, the game does little to actually teach history beyond blind guesswork and memorization.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Mario's Time Machine
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Sega's surprise launch of the Saturn in North America caught retailers and developers off guard. As a result, the pickings were slim. The Saturn's Japan launch happened only six months before the North American launch, so most Japanese third parties did not have anything ready for international release either. The launch date that was originally announced was September of 1995 for North America, but instead, they decided to launch it in May, right in the middle of E3! For a gamer that was anxiously anticipating the Saturn, that might sound like a good deal at first, but it meant that many games would be a full four months behind the launch. As a result, only Sega's first party games were available at first, but there was a decent spread of genres available. Panzer Dragoon was one of these games and became Sega's cinematic action game for the North American launch.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Panzer Dragoon
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It's finally time for me to review a Zelda game! This is far from the first game I've played in the series, that honor goes to Oracle of Ages on the Game Boy Color. I played the Game Boy Advance port of the predecessor of this game, A Link to the Past on my handheld. I loved it and now own the original Super Nintendo release, and still have my original boxes for Oracle of Ages, GBA Link to the Past, and the Minish Cap. Since I went so long without a home Nintendo console, it was only recently that I picked those up. A Link Between Worlds is the most recent original game in the long running series and was released in 2013 for the Nintendo's 3DS. It uses the world design and map of A Link to the Past as a base, and weaves a new tale in a familiar world.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
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Hyperdimension Neptunia is a turn based RPG developed by Idea Factory, Compile Heart to be specific. It was published by all kinds of different companies depending on where you live, Compile Heart in Japan, NIS America in North America, and Tecmo Koei in Europe. It has spawned sequels and a plethora of extra media in Japan. It was remade for the Vita with the epithet Re;Birth 1. Once again, the Japanese start messing around with our punctuation and grammar.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Hyperdimension Neptunia
One of my favorite parts about video games, other than collecting and playing them, is looking at the art included with the packaging. Your first impression of a game is likely going to be the initial part of the package you see, more often than not, it's the box art. With thousands of titles comes just as many examples of box art, and they range in appearance from artistic genius to something that looks as bad as a five year-old's first photoshop. While everyone else is doing their Top Games of 2014, I wanted to do something a little different; those that have read my blog since its earlier days know that most of my lists are usually different from the rest. And I want this holiday special to be no different. In no particular order here are five examples of the best, and worst examples of video game box art of all time!
Continue reading 5 Best and Worst Examples of Video Game Box Art
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Posted on Dec 13th 2014 at 05:00:00 AM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under Used Panty Collection, acquire, xseed, ps3, ps4, vita, akihabara, akiba, stripping, panties, maid, finnish beauties |
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Every so often there comes a game with such an absurd premise that you just can't help but try it out. Akiba's Trip is one such game. It was developed by Acquire and published by XSEED in North America. It was released in August of 2014 for PS3 and Vita, and on November 25th for the PS4. This game's setting is the Otaku and gaming Mecca of Akihabara. It also involves sun-fearing vampires and combat that revolves around stripping said basement dwelling Otaku vampires down to their skivvies. Otaku burn to a crisp from slight sun exposure after all! The main character is actually turned into one of these vampires in the introduction, and is saved by a pretty young girl with a kiss.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed
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Posted on Nov 27th 2014 at 05:00:00 AM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under yes i do have battletoads, nes, rare, game boy, wizards warriors, snes, genesis, mega drive, n64, gamecube, nintendo, ds, gb, gbc, gba, battletoads |
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Composer Compendium: David Wise
In simpler times, there were great melodies driving the music composition in games. When you're limited to a handful of sound channels, it really tests composers to make a piece that fits the game they are working on and their ability to make it memorable. Compositions also had to survive repeated listens, since many games were short and had only a handful of tracks. Today, we are going to take a look at one of the best Western composers for one of the best European game development companies. David Wise was Rare Ltd's house composer from 1985 to 2009, and his work stands out as much as the company he worked for.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: David Wise
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