Quest for Glory is a hybrid adventure-RPG series from Sierra. In the first entry in the series, you find yourself in the Valley of Spielburg. The land has been cursed by an Ogress, the Baron's children are missing, and a band of Brigands terrorize the town. Can you solve all of these problems and become a hero?
Back in 2006, a game known as Prey was released for the Xbox 360 and PC. While it was met with positive critical reception, it has been mostly forgotten about over the 10 years since its release. Truth be told, I rented Prey back when it first came out, but I was very hasty to decide that I didn't like it and returned the game without investing much time into it. I have always wanted to go back and give the game a proper try since it contains some unique gameplay mechanics, but I have never owned a copy and likely wouldn't have gotten around to it even if I did.
Fast forward to June 2016, a reboot of Prey was shown at E3, and I was immediately intrigued by the trailer. It instantly reminded me of the original Half-Life, one of my all-time favorite games. It also contained glimpses of some very interesting gameplay mechanics that I was excited to experience for myself. Since this new game is not a proper sequel to the original, I had no qualms about jumping right in without playing the original. Make no mistake about it, this new Prey has virtually nothing in common with the original Prey from 2006, save for the name and a general sci-fi theme.
RimWorld is an early access game developed by Ludeon Studios that has been available for purchase since 2013. Updates are steady, if a bit slow at times. It is the winner of multiple Indie Game of the Year awards for 2016, despite being in early access alpha, so there has to be something to this unfinished game, right? While I'm sure most by now have long been turned away from the idea of early access, there are still exceptions where games have plenty of content. Whether or not the content is polished or finished is another question. For Rimworld, each implementation of new features with every major update are actually functional, if a bit buggy for a few days post-release. RimWorld is in many ways easier to digest than Dwarf Fortress, and while Dwarf Fortress' simplistic graphics, archaic UI, high learning curve, and incredible depth are bound to turn off most would be players, RimWorld's simplistic art style at least adds flavor and something to look at.
Today I'm hitting up the Compile shooters again! Compile has made a lot of great games, and released them for many consoles. This one is M.U.S.H.A. on Sega Genesis. I go over the mechanics, weapon choices, level design, boss fights and its kick-ass soundtrack! Will this game replace my beloved Gun-Nac as my favorite Compile shooter?
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a point and click adventure horror game. It skips the typical jump scares and gore and goes straight for an unsettling look at human suffering...and machines that rise up to kill us all! It's based on the story by Harlan Ellison and he even voices the misanthropic computer, AM, who is responsible for humanity's downfall and the suffering of the game's protagonists. This is a grim game, but one with excellent writing and characterization.
[img width=483 height=575]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/B-005/gs/B-005-S-00280-A.jpg[/img] My favorite cartridge label for this game, since it best sums up the chaos within.
SPECS: Game: Bobby Is Going Home Genre: Platformer Year: 1983 Publisher: CCE/Taiwan Cooper Developer: Bit Corporation Rarity (according to AtariAge): Undetermined Controls: Joystick Number of Players: 1 player Average Cost: approx. $5 - $15+ (depending on label variation) Also Available On: Only for the Atari 2600 or similar VCS consoles
Tagline/Description: "Bobby feels that the world is so beautiful. He feels his life [is] perfect. But this day as he [is] going home, he meets many strange troubles."
Just over two years ago, I wrote an article about how my Atari 2600 collecting had branched out of North America and into Brazil. To summarize, there are several Brazilian 2600 titles that were not released in North America, but are playable on NTSC based systems. Of the handful of games that I have acquired, one of my favorites is a little 2-D platformer called Bobby Is Going Home. Let's take a look!
Since buying a Retron 5 nearly two years ago, I have invested a great deal of time and money into acquiring many of the great Super Famicom exclusive titles that we were not fortunate enough to receive in North America. Thanks to the Retron's ability to apply translation patches to the games (assuming that someone has gone through the trouble of translating the text and creating the patch for said game), not being able to understand text-heavy games because they are in Japanese is no longer an issue for those of us who don't speak the language.
Unfortunately, despite my ambitions of playing through all of these newly added imports in my collection, I have only played through a couple of these titles so far. However, I plan on putting forth a more solid effort toward playing more of these games in the future, starting with what will hopefully be the first of many Japan exclusive titles that I will be reviewing for this site: Alcahest!
I recently stumbled upon a game that surprised me with its presentation, cultural flavor, and overall fun. Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble for the Sony PSP was the perfect game to play after finishing Yakuza 5, as there are similarities between the two games, although Kenka Bancho is distinct in many ways. Though there are many entries in this series, this is the only one we've gotten in North America. Let's check it out!
As a kid growing up in the early to mid-90s, videogames were a huge part of my childhood. Like many kids from that time, I had a Game Boy and played it most often while away from home. However, there was one game I owned for the Game Boy that kept me playing whether I was at home or on the go: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Link's Awakening was an important game for me growing up, taking the formula of A Link to the Past, one of my all-time favorite games, and condensing it to Game Boy form meant it was an automatic hit in my book. It also helped that a good friend of mine at that time was also playing the game, so we would often compare notes and help each other along throughout the game.
But wait! This isn't an article about Link's Awakening, so why am I spending so much time talking about it? Well, it has come to my attention recently that the topic of this article, a game by the name of For the Frog the Bell Tolls, and Link's Awakening have a lot in common. Specifically, both games share the same engine, so the aesthetic as well as certain gameplay mechanics are nearly identical between these two games. With Link's Awakening being a game that is so near and dear to me, I knew I had to check out For the Frog the Bell Tolls, so I bought an original Japanese Game Boy cartridge of the game and popped it into my Retron 5 complete with an English language translation patch so I could enjoy this adventure firsthand!
I love FMV (Full Motion Video) games, even though I understand that most of them are not really good games, as much as interesting relics of gaming's past. However, there are exceptions and Under a Killing Moon is one of them. You play Tex Murphy, a PI modeled after Spade and Marlowe that lives and works in a future vision of San Francisco. In this adventure, you take on a dangerous cult striving for genetic purification. For me, the Tex Murphy games are the pinnacle of FMV adventure with a combination of good writing, decent acting and a good dose of (intentional) humour.
[img width=319 height=320]https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jy4p9ZTyQdA/WJFM9lYXMVI/AAAAAAAAAqw/RmHBIuHj9Eo9e5bTJW_0cVViEUniEzEpACLcB/s320/Links%2BAwakening%2Bbox.jpg[/img] Box art shamelessly stolen from MobyGames. It doesn't get much more iconic than seeing The Legend of Zelda in that stylized font, with the Triforce shield and Master Sword.
I was never a "Zelda kid" at all. I played a lot of NES games, because most of my friends had a NES console in their house, and as an introverted, geeky, chubby guy in the early 90's, gaming was the common escape I could share with my friends after school and on weekends. But since we played games together, we usually opted for games that either included 2-player cooperative modes, 2-player competitive modes, or some form of 2-player mode where you would take turns, such as Double Dragon or Super Mario Bros. 3. I occasionally dabbled in other genres when my friends fell asleep at 2 AM during a sleepover, but I usually just stuck with platformers, shooters, and action or puzzle games, because they were the kind of "pick up and play" games that I gravitated toward. For me, the very idea of The Legend of Zelda seemed foreign to me, because my idea of an adventure game was King's Quest, which I played obsessively on my family's home computer.
I have never considered myself to be primarily a PC gamer, but there was a time back in the late '90s and early 2000s when I did a considerable amount of gaming on the PC. During this time, I played such revered classics as Half-Life, Max Payne, and Deus Ex, all of which I would consider to be among my all-time favorites. Many excellent games were being released exclusively on PC, and when these titles were later ported to consoles, the results were often lackluster.
One such game from this era that I have always remembered fondly is Mafia. Releasing less than a year after the immensely popular Grand Theft Auto III, it may be easy to dismiss Mafia as a cheap knockoff. While Mafia may resemble the Grand Theft Auto series at first glance, I have always felt that it was the "anti-GTA" game. Although both games share similarities with their open-world environments, crime-based stories, and emphasis on driving and shooting gameplay mechanics, Mafia's more serious and less satirical tone, focus on realism, and larger emphasis on narrative rather than free roaming sandbox gameplay sets it apart from Rockstar's juggernaut.
The original Doom that was released back in 1993 was an extremely important landmark title in gaming. While not necessarily the first first-person-shooter to hit the market, it was definitely the game that popularized the genre. I have fond memories of playing Doom sometime back in the mid-90s on PC when I was less than the age of 10, with its gameplay and (at the time) mature content being unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Although the version I had only contained the first episode, I played through it multiple times, and it is still a game that I find myself going back to even today. After the Wolfenstein series got a great new entry with MachineGames' excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order, I was confident that id's other classic franchise would receive the same treatment when a new game in the Doom series, simply titled Doom, was shown at E3 2015. I was not disappointed. In fact, even after playing other highly acclaimed games from 2016 such as Uncharted 4 and Final Fantasy XV, I still feel like I enjoyed Doom enough to call it my Game of the Year for 2016.
Many longtime fans of the Final Fantasy series have lamented the direction Square has taken with their beloved franchise, forgoing the classic turn-based battle system (or rather the active-time battle system) in favor of a more action-oriented approach featuring real-time combat. While this rapid evolution of the series is no doubt an attempt by Square to garner new fans and compete with other AAA titles currently on the market, it has left some diehard fans feeling alienated and disinterested with the series. Enter World of Final Fantasy, a new title in the Final Fantasy series that harkens back to the games of old, featuring a slew of familiar characters and mechanics that should make any old-school fan of the series feel right at home.
Today I'm looking at one of gaming's lesser known mascots - Bonk! I review the original Bonk's Adventure on the TurboGrafx-16, as well as look at a bit of his history and the history of the console to explain why Bonk never made it big in North America like Mario or Sonic.
