Category Archives: Articles

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

Essentials, N64

N64 Essentials: Wave Race 64

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Some of my fondest memories from my formative years have the Nintendo 64 as their focal point.

Whether it was indulging in loud-mouthed, profanity-laden four-player GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and Duke Nukem 64 deathmatches or just me and my similarly non-sporty school friends desperately trying to understand the appeal of the World Cup through the use of EA’s imaginatively titled World Cup 98, this console holds a special place in my heart.

And yet somehow up until now I’d never played one of its most well-respected games: Wave Race 64. And now I am kicking myself for not checking it out sooner.

Continue reading N64 Essentials: Wave Race 64 →

Community

Continue, Don’t Quit : You Are Not in This Alone

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There’ll be a full post coming later today, but I wanted to share this as I feel it’s super-important.

I have struggled with depression, anxiety and even suicidal thoughts at times, and I know it has always helped me — and even brought me back from “the brink” — to have someone to talk to.

So this initiative set in place by some of my favourite anibloggers really touched me. Please read Auri’s post, and, if you’re hurting and need help… please reach out to someone, whether it’s me, or any one of the others who have offered their support.

You can contact me via Twitter at https://twitter.com/MoeGamer or via my site https://moegamer.net/contact — or check out any of the other people who have put themselves forward for this by reading Auri’s original post.

Thank you for setting this up, everyone; I feel that a lot of people out there will benefit just from knowing this exists.

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Eve

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Later this week, we’re going to take a closer look at Inti Creates’ excellent Blaster Master Zero for Switch and 3DS. So it’s only fitting that we devote a Waifu Wednesday to its heroine.

Blaster Master as a whole actually has rather more detailed lore than you might expect for… well, for something with a title like Blaster Master, and Eve has played an important role in the series’ backstory from the beginning.

However, she wasn’t directly “seen” until the novelisation of Blaster Master by Peter Lerangis (writing under the pen name of A. L. Singer) that formed part of the Worlds of Power series that novelised a number of popular NES games. And then she was completely reimagined for Blaster Master Zero anyway, which had the scope to make a lot more of its narrative context than the NES original did.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Eve →

Essentials, N64, Puzzlers

Puzzler Essentials: Tetrisphere

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Imagine Tetris. Then imagine it wrapped around a sphere. Then forget whatever you just pictured, because Tetrisphere is nothing like that. It’s still great, though.

Technically Tetrisphere is a little outside of MoeGamer’s normal remit in that it was not developed by a Japanese company, nor was it ever actually released in Japan. It did, however, find its home on a Japanese games console — the Nintendo 64 — and as such it totally counts. Particularly as it’s an awesome puzzle game, and we’re all about awesome puzzle games.

So how can one possibly make something as simple and elegant as Tetris work in a three-dimensional, spherical space? Well, as I’ve previously alluded to, you don’t; you do something a bit different.

Continue reading Puzzler Essentials: Tetrisphere →

Community, One-Shots

Game Chasing: The Retro Hut, Southampton

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Although “gaming YouTubers” have been around for a good few years now, I’ve only really started exploring their work in earnest recently.

One of the channels I’ve grown to be particularly fond of in the last couple of months is The Game Chasers, where two friends named Billy and Jay, who have known each other since the ’90s, travel around various flea markets and game stores in search of retro video games to add to their collection. Their headline videos are inspired by TV shows such as American Pickers, but they’ve carved out their own identity over time and have established themselves as an immensely entertaining channel that is a bit different from your usual Let’s Players and suchlike.

One thing I frequently find myself feeling while watching their videos, however, is a slight pang of jealousy at the awesome retro gaming stores they seemingly have within reasonably easy reach of them. So I was very interested to discover by accident that there is actually a store like this in my neck of the woods. Naturally, I went to investigate.

Continue reading Game Chasing: The Retro Hut, Southampton →

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Ekoro

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As we’re about to launch headlong into a month of Inti Creates sidescrollers for February’s Cover Game(s) features, what better waifu to pick for this week than someone who is rapidly becoming the company’s mascot?

First introduced in 2015’s Gal*Gun Double Peace, Ekoro is a third-year student at the Angel Academy, and one of the catalysts for the events that unfold over the course of that game.

Inadvertently causing protagonist Houdai to become irresistible to women by shooting him with an angel’s arrow 32 times more powerful than she intended, Ekoro spends most of Double Peace demonstrating that, just like anyone, angels are neither infallible nor squeaky clean at all times.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Ekoro →

One-Shots

Altering Content and Self-Censorship Pleases No-One

18 Comments

Yesterday, DRM-free digital distribution platform GOG.com posted a lengthy interview with localisation producer Tom Lipschultz and team leader Ken Berry from XSEED Games, whose most recent localisation project Zwei has recently been released on GOG’s storefront.

Lipschultz in particular has been known up until the time of writing as someone who claims to hold a “zero-tolerance” policy towards content edits made during localisation of Japanese titles for Western audiences, but a number of his comments throughout the interview gave a few people pause.

And it’s worth talking about those points in detail, because some of what Lipschultz says unfortunately appears to demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of where his priorities should be as part of a successful and prolific localisation company that has brought a number of beloved franchises to the West.

Continue reading Altering Content and Self-Censorship Pleases No-One →

Essentials, Neo Geo

Neo Geo Essentials: Neo Turf Masters

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It’s honestly kind of surprising how many times the sport of golf has been adapted to the arcade format.

On the surface, you wouldn’t think the two things are particularly compatible; golf is a terribly sedate, polite sort of sport that takes all day to play, whereas arcade games are typically noisy, spectacular and, in many cases, over and done with in five minutes or less.

And yet that hasn’t stopped a number of developers trying their best to adapt it to a quarter-munching format, with one of the very best examples being Nazca’s Neo Turf Masters for Neo Geo, a game which has had a bit of a resurgence recently thanks to numerous ports to PC and console.

Continue reading Neo Geo Essentials: Neo Turf Masters →

Community

Blogger Recognition Award

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Community is important. I’ve known this for a while, of course — I think most people know it on one level or another — but I want to make more of an effort to be part of something bigger with MoeGamer here.

I started this process towards the end of last year with some more active engagement with a number of other WordPress bloggers who are passionate about similar things to me, and, of course, I have a love-it, hate-it relationship with Twitter. I’d like to take things a little further, though, so expect more Community-themed posts here on MoeGamer going forward as I give some love and acknowledgement to the many talented people out there working hard on their own creative endeavours, just like I am with this little corner of the Internet.

A good place to start, I feel, would be by responding to the Blogger Recognition Award that Arthifis of Arthifis’ Place nominated me for earlier today, so let’s do just that!

Continue reading Blogger Recognition Award →

Essentials

Namco Essentials: Pac-Man Vs.

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One of the most interesting inclusions in the Nintendo Switch release of Namco Museum is Pac-Man Vs.

Originally released for GameCube in 2003, it’s an unusual title for Namco in that it wasn’t developed in-house as an arcade game; rather, it was designed by the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto and developed by Nintendo specifically for the GameCube, which perhaps explains why we haven’t seen it rereleased for anything other than Nintendo DS (via that platform’s own Namco Museum release) and, most recently at the time of writing, Switch.

It’s also noteworthy as one of the first examples of asymmetric multiplayer gameplay, which makes the fact it never got a release on Wii U somewhat baffling. But, well, it’s a bit late for that now!

Continue reading Namco Essentials: Pac-Man Vs. →