Category Archives: Articles

All the non-Cover Game articles and features in one place.

One-Shots

Lapis x Labyrinth: Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango Daikazoku

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Genre blends can make for some interesting experiences, and over the years developers have tried all sorts of things.

We’ve had racing games with RPG elements, dating sims with strategy games attached, first-person shooters combined with adventure games… at this point most things have been tried, you might think.

What about dungeon crawler, platform game, action RPG, shoot ’em up and pachinko? I bet I have your attention now, hmm? Let’s look at Lapis x Labyrinth from Nippon Ichi Software — one of the company’s best games for a long time, and a title which looks distressingly set to pass by an awful lot of people unnoticed.

Continue reading Lapis x Labyrinth: Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango, Dango Daikazoku →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

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Hello everyone! I’d say it’s been nice to relax for a weekend after last week’s Digitiser Live funtimes, but I’ve been recording and editing a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, so I’ve been busy this weekend too!

It should be a good episode, and I hope you like it. Chris and I sit down to talk about “vanishing point” racers — a subject close to my heart and not so close to Chris’ heart, so it makes for an interesting discussion, for sure.

In the meantime, why don’t we take a moment to check out what you might have missed in the last week or so?

Continue reading Around the Network →

One-Shots

Doom: Now Available On the Go. Kind Of.

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[UPDATE 27/07/2019 — Bethesda has said in a tweet that the online login requirement mentioned in this article was originally intended to be an optional feature for their “Slayer’s Club” members to obtain rewards for playing the classic Doom games. They are presently working on a fix to remove the mandatory online login. The original article follows while the situation remains.]

The sudden, surprise news that id Software’s venerable first-person shooter Doom was coming to Nintendo Switch (and PS4, and Xbox One) was initially very exciting indeed.

In celebration of Doom’s 25th anniversary, it seemed, we were to be treated to modern ports of Doom, Doom II and the underappreciated Doom III — and they were going to be cheap. Moreover, the fact that they were coming to Switch meant that you’d finally be able to take a competent version of Doom on the go with you without having to battle mobile versions’ awful touchscreen controls.

And indeed, you can now take a competent version of Doom on the go with you… but there are some important things to note. Let’s take a look.

Continue reading Doom: Now Available On the Go. Kind Of. →

Community

Sunshine Blogger Award

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A big thank you to Megan of A Geeky Gal for nominating me for the Sunshine Blogger Award.

For the unfamiliar, these “awards” are an occasional community affair that give all of us writing for our own (and hopefully, your) entertainment the opportunity to  break free of our usual formats and give our readers and blogging comrades the opportunity to get to know us a bit better. Then we tag a few more people, and we can all find some great new sites to read. Everybody wins!

All right. Let’s see what’s going on with all this, then…

Continue reading Sunshine Blogger Award →

Hundred Honeys, Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: The Hundred Honeys Project Neo

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It’s been a good while since I’ve done one of these, and I’ve been meaning to have a proper full-on play with Honey Select Unlimited Extend’s Studio Neo for a while. No time like the present, eh?

For those just joining us, Honey Select Unlimited is a legendary hentai game from developer Illusion that is most well-known for its excellent character creation tools rather than its filthy content. (Its filthy content is very good too, mind.) Honey Select Unlimited Extend is an expansion pack for it, and part of that expansion is an all-new photo studio app to complement and/or replace the original Honey Unlimited Studio application.

The Hundred Honeys Project, meanwhile, is my ongoing attempt to break the Honey Select Unlimited studio applications by ramming as many characters as possible into a single scene without my computer exploding.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: The Hundred Honeys Project Neo →

Essentials, One-Shots, Puzzlers

Crawlco Block Knockers: A Game That Indeed Contains Both Blocks and Knockers

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If you were to tell me a couple of weeks ago that one of the most addictive, satisfying games of the summer would be a peculiar combination of venerable (but largely forgotten) Sega arcade title Pengo and ’90s Japanese arcade eroge I’d… have probably believed you, to be honest, but here we are anyway.

Yes, the aptly named Crawlco Block Knockers is a deliberate homage to dank, smoky, sleazy Japanese arcades in the ’90s and the games you would find therein. Drawing particular inspiration from Kaneko’s Gals Panic series and Mitchell Corporation’s Gonta the Diver duology, the game combines strategic thinking, arcade action, ’80s inspired vaporwave music and the opportunity to gradually reveal images of attractive, curvy women not wearing very much.

Sounds like a party, right? Let’s take a look. Some mildly NSFW shenanigans after the jump!

Continue reading Crawlco Block Knockers: A Game That Indeed Contains Both Blocks and Knockers →

Community, One-Shots

Why Collect?

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Collecting games is a major hobby for many people — whether they’re into modern titles or retro stuff.

Thankfully, although certain portions of the industry are trying desperately to push us towards an all-digital (or, worse, an all-streaming) future, there are still plenty of companies out there who understand that there is still very much a collector’s market: people want to fill their shelves with their favourite games, and they want cool goodies to go with them.

Why bother, though? Aren’t you just cluttering up your limited living space?

Continue reading Why Collect? →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

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Happy Sunday everyone! Apologies for the quietness of the weekend just passed (including a lack of an Atari A to Z Flashback video) — I spent yesterday at Digitiser Live in London, so didn’t have much time to do anything else!

It was a really great day. If you’d like to find out more, check out my daily personal blog over on Patreon; suffice to say it was a pretty magical experience, and I’m glad I took the time to go and see that shambolic nonsense. Normal business will resume this week!

So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at what you might have missed this week, then.

Continue reading Around the Network →

Essentials, NES

NES Essentials: Wrecking Crew

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Wrecking Crew is one of Nintendo mascot Mario’s more underappreciated adventures — and a fairly underappreciated entry in the NES’ overall library, in fact.

First released for Famicom in June of 1985 and subsequently as one of the 17 launch titles for the Western Nintendo Entertainment System, Wrecking Crew is something of a departure from what you might typically expect from a Mario game — even outside of the main Super Mario Bros. series.

It’s a puzzle game with a strong emphasis on strategic thinking and forward planning rather than fast action or precise platforming, and it’s actually been one of my favourite games in the NES’ library since I first encountered it via the Wii’s Virtual Console service. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading NES Essentials: Wrecking Crew →

Essentials, Racers, Sega Ages

Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon

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Trivia of the day: the shiny red car in the original OutRun is not, as many people assume (and as both numerous sites on the Internet and some incarnations of the game’s original manual claim), a Ferrari Testarossa; it’s just a car designed to look uncannily like a Ferrari Testarossa — in other words, it’s a thoroughly unlicensed knockoff.

The fact that the car in OutRun is almost-but-not-quite a Ferrari is probably why this first game in the series has been so widely ported and still remains relevant today, while the officially Ferrari-branded OutRun 2 and its expanded quasi-sequel OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast remain tragically trapped in licensing limbo.

The original OutRun has been ported to enough platforms to make the original Final Fantasy and Ys games blush over the years, as well as putting in occasional guest appearances in games such as Shenmue 2 and Yakuza 0. The latest direct port at the time of writing is for Nintendo Switch as part of the Sega Ages collection and is the work of emulation maestros M2, so let’s once again put our foot to the floor and get driving.

Continue reading Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon →