Category Archives: Essentials

A collection of articles highlighting noteworthy or interesting games from the libraries of lesser-appreciated, rarer or retro systems, and in specific genres.

One-Shots, Switch

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon – Enhanced Nostalgia

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Part of my intention behind my Delving Into series focusing on Castlevania was to get a solid understanding of the classic franchise before jumping into Koji Igarashi’s Kickstarter-funded Bloodstained project.

While I’m not all the way through the classic games at the time of writing, I do feel like I’m at an adequate point where I can start looking at the two Bloodstained games and be able to analyse their similarities and differences from classic-formula Castlevania.

So let’s begin today with a look at Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, a spinoff title developed by Inti Creates, designed more in the mould of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse than the more recent, post-Symphony of the Night open-structure 2D platformer incarnations.

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Mega Drive, Streets of Rage

Streets of Rage 2: Everyone’s Favourite

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Speak to pretty much anyone familiar with the Streets of Rage series, and chances are their favourite installment is probably the second.

While the first game may have set the template for the series to follow by being a beat ’em up designed for the home rather than the arcade, the second is where it well and truly hit its stride. Streets of Rage 2 demonstrates what the humble Mega Drive is truly capable of in the hands of real masters of their craft.

And it’s a game that is still relevant, enormously playable and impressive to look at, even to this day. So let’s take a closer look.

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Mega Drive

Streets of Rage: Dawn of a Phenomenon

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The Streets of Rage series is an all-time great in gaming, and you could practically hear the collective sigh of relief from the entire community when the brand new fourth installment, released at the tail end of April 2020, turned out to be good.

How do the older installments hold up today, though? Having not played them for a few years, I figured “while I wait for my Limited Run copy of Streets of Rage 4 to arrive” would be the perfect time to revisit them all. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

We begin, of course, with the first game in the series, which first hit the streets in 1991 with releases for the Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear. We’ll be concentrating on the 16-bit Mega Drive release for today, since that’s still the most readily available version for modern audiences. Let’s dive in.

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ADK Damashii, Neo Geo

Ninja Commando: Tiger and Dragon (And Eagle)

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ADK’s Ninja Combat is, as we’ve previously established, a game that is fun in principle but somewhat lacking in execution due to its extremely questionable difficulty balancing.

Two years after Ninja Combat helped to launch the Neo Geo, ADK returned to all things ninja with a spiritual successor. Enter Ninja Commando, which brought with it a shift in perspective from side-on to top-down, and a much more reasonable challenge for your average player — albeit one that still gets pretty tough in its latter levels!

Ninja Commando has been rereleased a few times over the years, and also forms part of the ADK Damashii collection for PlayStation 2, which is the version we’re primarily concerned with today. Let’s take a closer look!

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One-Shots, Switch

Lonely Mountains: Downhill – Bringing the Outside Inside

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For a lot of us, the more “extreme” sports are probably best left in the realm of fantasy, because we’d probably kill ourselves within about five seconds of starting.

I, for example, know that while I am perfectly capable of riding a bike, I would almost certainly be never heard from ever again were you to put me at the summit of a mountain atop a suitable bicycle and encourage me to enjoy a scenic but perilous trail down to the bottom. Which is a shame, because I rather enjoy the peacefulness of being out in nature — the breeze brushing past you, the clear air and the relaxing, soothing sounds of being far from “civilisation”.

Lucky, then, that we have games like Lonely Mountains: Downhill, which allow you to enjoy at least some of that experience from the comfort of your sofa — and without any risk of injuries ranging from grazed knees to catastrophic eruption of ribcage from torso. Let’s take a closer look.

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ADK Damashii, Neo Geo

Ninja Combat: From a Distance

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One cool thing that we’ve started to see in the last couple of console generations is publishers bringing formerly Japan-only releases to the West — not necessarily fully translated, but simply providing us access to games that were previously difficult or impractical to get hold of.

One such example is ADK Damashii, a compilation of Neo Geo games that was released for PlayStation 2 back in 2008. It was ported to PlayStation 4 in 2015 for Japanese players — then, two years later, it got a surprise Western release via digital download, followed by a limited packaged release courtesy of Limited Run Games at the tail end of 2019.

ADK Damashii features five games to enjoy, all developed by former SNK partner Alpha Denshi Kabushiki Gaisha, also known as Alpha Denshi Corporation or, you guessed it, ADK. Let’s begin with a look at the rather literally titled Ninja Combat.

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One-Shots, Switch

Kawaii Deathu Desu: The Art of Finger Dexterity

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Back in the early days of gaming, it wasn’t at all unusual to find games built around a single, static mechanic that simply required players to show increasing levels of mastery over it.

There was a certain degree of “make your own fun” to these games; you might try to think up challenges to impose on yourself, or keep track of your high scores, or perhaps compete against a friend to see who truly was best.

These days, there tends to be an expectation that even “arcadey” games have a certain amount of depth to them. But titles like Kawaii Deathu Desu, developed by Brazilian outfit Pippin Games, demonstrate that sometimes all you need are two buttons and some twitchy fingers — plus some cute girls never hurt, either. Let’s take a closer look.

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PSP

Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary: The Remake Treatment

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At the time of writing, Final Fantasy VII Remake has just released to widespread acclaim (and a bit of moaning, but that’s just the Internet doing its usual thing). But this is far from the first Final Fantasy to get the remake treatment!

Granted, the remakes that the first Final Fantasy has received over the years are somewhat less drastic than the ambitious multi-part Final Fantasy VII Remake project, but they’re noteworthy nonetheless. And they don’t come much better than the PSP “20th Anniversary” edition that released back in 2007.

So let’s take a closer look at what makes this version great.

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One-Shots, Shmups

Waifu Uncovered: Return of the Strip ‘Em Up

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So it seems that “strip ’em up” is a thing now. I am neither surprised nor particularly upset about this, given that Kaneko’s classic erotic Qix-alike Gals Panic also spawned its own subgenre; it’s just amusing to see this sort of thing happen in the modern day.

For the unfamiliar, the strip ’em up, previously seen here on MoeGamer in the form of Deep Space Waifu (and in a tangentially different form in Crawlco Block Knockers) is a take on the shoot ’em up — or, more broadly, arcade game — formula in which you not only blast enemies, you also, through engaging with the game’s specific mechanics, find some means of disrobing the (usually anime-style) young lady in the background. Success provides titties; failure provides frustration.

Which brings us to Waifu Uncovered, product of the delightfully named One Hand Free Studios, and a game that, rather pleasingly, isn’t just a clone of Deep Space Waifu. Let’s take a closer look!

Mild NSFW stuff ahead!

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One-Shots, Switch

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories – Living a Crisis

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I reviewed this game for Nintendo Life! Stop by and check out my thoughts over there, then pop back here for a more in-depth look.

In video games, we’re accustomed to having some sort of concrete “villain” to fight — usually a personified antagonist of some description.

But what happens when you don’t really have an “enemy” as such — you’re just struggling against natural forces that have no feelings about you one way or the other? And how will your experiences interact with those of the people around you?

These are the questions that Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories attempts to answer. So let’s take a closer look at how it does that.

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