Warriors Wednesday: When You Get Around Like I Do, You Pick Up a Thing or Two – Warriors Orochi #19

Sakon Shima has been something of a fixture in the Samurai Warriors series since the second installment.

Typically depicted as a cunning strategist and a powerful warrior in his own right, the real Sakon Shima was an extremely well-regarded and famous samurai. After his original master Junkei Tsutsui met his end, he retired, but after being offered an extraordinarily generous amount of wealth, he decided to return to the fray to serve under Mitsunari Ishida. If someone offers you half of their income to bring you on board, you don’t argue!

Of course, most of this is irrelevant in Warriors Orochi, but Shima still has a significant role to play from the perspective of his formidable strategic skills. Hit the jump to see how he helped out this time around!

Continue reading Warriors Wednesday: When You Get Around Like I Do, You Pick Up a Thing or Two – Warriors Orochi #19

Atari A to Z: Shooting Arcade

Merry Christmas! And what better way to celebrate the festive season than with some fairground-style shooting action?

DataSoft’s Shooting Arcade from 1982 is not an especially complex game, but it has an enjoyably addictive quality to it, brought about through increasingly challenging mechanics and an emphasis on accuracy rather than fast action.

If you need a bit of time away from the family this Christmas, you could do far worse than blast away at a few pink elephants…

Merry Christmas!

Hello! I’m away from easy access to a computer on Christmas Day, so I thought I’d post an early Christmas message today.

I just wanted to say a brief thank you to everyone who has supported MoeGamer since its inception in 2014, whether it’s through liking, commenting on and sharing my work, or through financially supporting it via Patreon or Ko-Fi.

It’s been a great year for the site, with the best annual viewing figures ever, and some of my favourite work I’ve created to date. I’ve had great fun getting a format for YouTube videos established (though I still have some ideas I want to explore in the new year!) and I’ve been delighted to collaborate with my closest friend on a podcast I’m both proud of and continually excited to be a part of.

2019 is going to be an even better year, and I can’t wait to continue sharing my passion and enthusiasm for gaming with you all. A sincere, heartfelt thank you for all your support, and I hope you have a wonderfully restful festive season.

Love, Pete xx

Sunday Driving: Timeless Classics of Video Game Music

OutRun has endured in popularity for so long for a number of reasons.

First and arguably foremost is its sheer “pick up and play” nature. It’s simple to understand, easy to get into and tricky to master — exactly what you want from an arcade game — and this overall feel has continued into its later console incarnations.

Secondly is its soundtrack. Classics like Magical Sound Shower and Splash Wave sound just as good today as they did back when the first OutRun game hit arcades — and Sega very much understands this has always been part of the appeal!

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Around the Network

Hello! It’s nearly Christmas!

Yes, that most wonderful (and/or stressful, and/or depressing, depending on your own personal life situation) time of the year is just around the corner, many of you reading this will have broken up from work or school, and there’s just a general air of anticipation in the… um… air.

I’ll be taking a brief break from MoeGamer on Monday and Tuesday to enjoy the festivities, but will be back with the rest of the MoeGamer Awards from Wednesday onwards. In the meantime, hit the jump to see what you might have missed this week.

Continue reading Around the Network

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best H-Scene

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by… well, me, but AK thought it was a good idea so I’m giving him credit.

We’ve explored a number of visual novels together here on MoeGamer, many of which include explicit sexual scenes.

This is not an aspect of these games that tends to get talked about all that much by gaming culture at large; some critics, outlets and even players sometimes seemingly go so far as to regard the H-scenes of a game as something of a “dirty little secret”, or simply outright ignore them altogether.

While there’s no denying that nukige exist purely to be mildly interactive pornography, true eroge make good use of their sexual scenes to further their narratives and show us another side of the main characters. Today’s award celebrates an excellent use of an H-scene for exactly these purposes. With that in mind, please be aware that there is extremely explicit text and images ahead. You have been warned!

And the winner is… no, seriously, there really is all manner of extremely NSFW filth ahead, are you ready? Okay. The winner is…

Continue reading The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best H-Scene

New Game Plus: I Hate It When They Run Away – Project Zero #7

After last week’s mishaps, we get well and truly back on track with our quest to fill out that damn ghost list.

Today we make a start on the second chapter of Project Zero on Nightmare difficulty, and encounter some of the most challenging to capture “wandering ghosts” in the game. While not hostile, you’ll still need wits, skill and proper preparation to add these little buggers to your list.

Hit the jump and see just quite how much in the way of wits, skill and proper preparation I have in evidence…

Continue reading New Game Plus: I Hate It When They Run Away – Project Zero #7

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 15 – Mario and Sonic Got Nothing on These Guys

Hello! Welcome back to The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring the mellifluous tones of both my good self and my valued friend 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; 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. Subscribe. Semicolons.

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

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 15 – Mario and Sonic Got Nothing on These Guys

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best Romantic Comedy

The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards that I’ve devised in collaboration with the community as an excuse to celebrate the games, experiences and fanbases that have left a particular impression on me in 2018. Find out more and leave a suggestion here!

This award was suggested by Toon Vandendries.

This is a topic Chris and I very much want to discuss on the podcast at some point in the near future, but I’ve also written about it in the past, too.

I’m talking about the idea of genre. And not genre as it is typically used when talking about games — to describe purely mechanical elements — but rather genre as it relates to the core subject matter in a game; its central themes, style and overall feel. In the early days of gaming, this was not really something we could discuss with much confidence, but as games have become more ambitious in terms of their storytelling and overall sense of worldbuilding, we most certainly can now.

So with that in mind, what was the best romantic comedy game I enjoyed over the course of the last year?

And the winner is…

Continue reading The MoeGamer Awards 2018: Best Romantic Comedy

Atari ST A to Z: Missile Command

Here on Zardon, we are peaceful, we don’t like to fight. Here on Zardon, we work hard, and try to do what’s right. We would never be the first ones to stage an attack. But when someone shoots at us… we shoot back!

Kudos (and condolences) to you if that means anything to you; it’s from the official vinyl adaptation of Atari’s Missile Command by Kid Stuff in the ’80s — which someone has graciously uploaded to YouTube in its entirety here.

We’re here to take a look at the Atari ST version of Missile Command from 1987, however. This is a port I didn’t know existed until recently, but given Atari also published solid ST ports of Moon Patrol, Asteroids Deluxe and Crystal Castles, it’s not surprising. Is it any good, though…?

Follow Atari A to Z on its own dedicated site here!

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