Hello! How are you? The weather seems to be on the turn here and the evenings are getting a bit lighter, so the general mood seems to be lifting a bit. January sure sucks, huh.
Well, a low mood for the last month and a bit hasn’t stopped me from hammering out a whole bunch of cool stuff for you to hopefully enjoy! We’ve kicked off a new Cover Game feature, for starters, as well as several ongoing series.
Hit the jump to see what you might have missed this week.
I don’t like spiders. I do, however, absolutely LOVE Black Widow, a delightful vector-based twin-stick shooter.
In Black Widow, you play a spider trying to defend their web from all manner of incoming creepy crawlies. And, unfortunately, it seems that they are sick and tired of you doing your spidery thing, and as such are more than capable of taking you out with a single, fatal touch.
Fortunately, you aren’t just any spider. You are the Black Widow, a laser-spitting spider of doom, the kind of thing that you really wouldn’t want to find under your toilet seat when you wake up in the middle of the night to go for a dump…
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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Every so often a game comes along that really makes you sit up and pay attention.
Sometimes it’s because it features a beautiful refinement or evolution of some established mechanics. Sometimes it’s because it really pushes graphical technology forwards. Sometimes it has famous names attached to it.
And sometimes it’s 428: Shibuya Scramble, a title so far removed from what we traditionally think of as a “video game” that you can’t help but notice it.
Continue reading 428: Shibuya Scramble – Introduction and History
Our (re)adventures in Atelier Rorona DX continue! Now we’ve finished the first assignment in this New Game Plus run, what’s next?
Well, there are plenty of options. Complete some quests, go out exploring, craft some items, make some materials and turn them into weapons and armour, fill out a bingo card, buy some beehives…
Hit the jump and see what Rorona got up to while waiting for her first deadline to hit.
Continue reading New Game Plus: Furaipan Da Yo – Atelier Rorona DX #2
All right. We’ve established that Ace Combat 7 absolutely has its own sense of style, that the VR mode is something rather special and that it strikes a great balance between arcade action and more realistic simulation. What about the actual missions, and the overall “game” experience?
Well, for those who have been hoping for a true next-gen Ace Combat experience, I am delighted to confirm that you will absolutely find this in Ace Combat 7 — both in terms of its narrative style, and in terms of how it plays.
Actual combat is where the game is at its most unrealistic — but also its most fun. Let’s take a closer look.
Continue reading Delving Into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – #4
I love it when game developers get creative. This is not an altogether unusual sight these days, of course, but back in the early to mid ’80s, it was always a real treat to see someone step outside of genre “norms”.
Such was the case with Time Bandit by Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear, a top-down action adventure with elements of text adventures, role-playing games, Pac-Man and all manner of other goodness. While superficially resembling Gauntlet — which actually came out after Time Bandit was fully developed — there’s a hell of a lot of depth here, and some fiendish puzzles to unravel.
If you want a game that pretty much sums up what the Atari ST gaming experience is all about, you can do far worse than give Time Bandit the, uh, time of day.
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
Side note: since starting Dynasty Warriors 8, in which they pronounce everyone’s names quite differently from earlier Warriors games, I have become aware that I am perhaps pronouncing… well, everyone’s name wrong. Tai-shuh-tsuh, indeed.
Anyway. That, hopefully, will not detract too much from your experiences with the ever-expanding series that is Warriors Wednesday. We’re continuing to make it through the Wu campaign of Warriors Orochi at a pretty decent pace — even if a few things do happen to go a little bit wrong this time around!
Hit the jump to see how things went in the latest mission for our brave heroes and overenthusiastic heroines. Hi-yaaa!
Continue reading Warriors Wednesday: In Case of Emergency, Use Taishi Ci – Warriors Orochi #25
As I noted last time, I’ve primarily been spending my time in DW8XLDE so far in the Story mode, so I thought I’d talk a bit about that today.
The Story mode (or Musou mode, as it was called in some earlier installments) has changed its form and structure numerous times over the course of the various Dynasty Warriors releases, but it has always focused on one thing: retelling the story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms by showcasing a number of its most significant battles from several different perspectives.
DW8XLDE’s take on Story mode has a few interesting wrinkles that provide it plenty of replay value… and give the game as a whole a significant amount of content even before you get into the more freeform, strategic Ambition mode. Let’s take a look.
Continue reading Delving Into Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition – #2
Although the Atari 8-bit range of computers mostly lost what little “mainstream” relevance they had with the onset of the 16-bit era — which, in turn, was killed off by the widespread adoption of standardised MS-DOS and Windows PCs — there are a few dedicated developers out there still plugging away at this old hardware.
The results these modern maestros can get out of ancient computers can be, at times, absolutely astonishing. Some form part of what is known as the “demoscene”, producing audible and graphical showcases that push the hardware to its absolute limits. Others take that extra step and add true interactivity, making actual games with impressive visuals and sounds to show what they’re really capable of.
Yoomp from 2007 is an example of the latter. It makes use of some clever graphical techniques, fully optimised for both PAL and NTSC displays, and some delightfully catchy, toe-tapping music courtesy of the Atari’s trusty POKEY chip. If you’d like to find out more about this game — and download it for free to try for yourself — check out the official website here.
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
What’s that? A new feature? Why yes, yes it is.
In MoeGamer Music, an occasional feature, I sit down with a blank post and sit down to listen to a whole album without interruptions. While doing so, I will pen some immediate thoughts about each track, as well as providing a bit of information about the album as a whole.
And yes, being a physical release sort of person, everything I will be covering in this column is available on CD, and I will be listening to it on CD rather than ripping it to my digital music library. Distraction-free listening for the win.
We begin today with Diggin in the Carts: A Collection of Pioneering Japanese Video Game Music, published by Hyperdub. If you want to listen along, check out the Bandcamp page here.
Continue reading Diggin in the Carts – A Collection of Pioneering Japanese Video Game Music
