Table Top Racing World Tour Nitro Edition: Less is More

One of the most commonly cited reasons for enjoying video games is allowing oneself to realise fantasies of various descriptions.

Frequently, these fantasies are heroic in nature, casting us into a world that is not our own and throwing us into conflict against a powerful foe that is nonetheless possible to overcome with enough determination. Sometimes they’re emotional, allowing us to engage with characters who are very different from people we encounter in reality. They might even be sexual, giving us the opportunity to explore a side of ourselves we find difficult to bring up even with people we know and love.

Or sometimes they might just be wondering what it would be like if your childhood toy cars could actually power themselves and race around an improvised circuit constructed of whatever happened to be on hand at the time. Enter the extravagantly titled Table Top Racing World Tour Nitro Edition, a game that can most certainly help with that last one, even if it won’t assist with your throbbing libido in the slightest. Unless you’re really into tiny cars.

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Atari ST A to Z: Revenge II

When is a Jeff Minter game not a Jeff Minter game? When it’s ported to Atari ST by a different team.

Such is the case with Revenge II, also known as Revenge of the Mutant Camels II or Return of the Mutant Camels. While Minter was responsible for the original versions of this game, the ST port was handled by a separate team and the game was published via Mastertronic.

Just because Minter wasn’t directly involved doesn’t mean that this isn’t a ridiculous, psychedelic trip of a game, however…

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Custom Order Maid 3D 2: First Day at the Empire Club

Something a little different for today’s Waifu Wednesday!

With the long-awaited English language release of KISS’ Custom Order Maid 3D 2 on both Steam and Nutaku, I wanted to give this game some coverage as, if you didn’t already know, the Custom Maid series in general is an important part of MoeGamer: the site’s mascots were all made in previous game Custom Maid 3D 2.

I’ll be checking out this game over the long term as there’s a surprising amount more to it than I realised, but what better time to kick things off than on Waifu Wednesday? Let’s knock on the door of the Empire Club and see what awaits us…

Some very NSFW gubbins ahead. You have been warned!

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Warriors Wednesday: Chasing the Sun – Warriors Orochi #49

Cao Pi is definitely up to something… and he’s starting to get bolder.

In today’s mission, the Wei leader and his friends are tasked with putting down a rebellion by Sun Ce — the same rebellion, you may recall, that we helped instigate back in the Wu campaign.

We’re getting closer to the time that Cao Pi inevitably betrays Da Ji and Orochi… but for the moment he’s just biding his time.

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

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

Atari A to Z: X:8

It’s really cool that enthusiasts are still developing new games for old platforms such as the Atari 8-bit.

Today’s game is one such example; it won a competition hosted by German user group ABBUC back in 2013, and is quite well-regarded as a result.

While its blasting action does get a little repetitive after a while, there’s little denying that X:8 is a technically impressive release that pushes the humble Atari 8-bit hard to pull off some smooth, slick arcade action.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official website.

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 26 – Vanishing Point

Humblest greetings to you, Internet denizen, and a hearty welcome to another episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my good self and a spicy pepper-chomping Mr Chris Caskie of MrGilderPixels.

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos (including the Atari A to Z retro gaming series); you can follow on Soundcloud for the audio-only version of the podcast; you can subscribe via RSS to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you can subscribe via iTunes. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

Or you can hit the jump to watch or listen to today’s episode right here on MoeGamer.

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 26 – Vanishing Point

Around the Network

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

Atari A to Z Flashback: Super Bug

While a bit different from what we know today as the “arcade racer”, Atari’s early attempts in this regard were all rather enjoyable.

Of the three included in the Atari Flashback Classics collection, Super Bug was the earliest and, consequently, the simplest. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time, however — if anything it makes it a great place to start!

Drive until you can’t drive any more: that’s all you need to do. But as we’ve seen countless times on this series already, sometimes it’s the simplest concepts that make for the most addictive games…

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Doom: Now Available On the Go. Kind Of.

[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.

The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.