Videos, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: The Solid Whack You Can Deliver with Wood – Warriors Orochi #12

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Things are getting noticeably more difficult as we approach the conclusion of the Samurai campaign in Warriors Orochi.

Today’s mission sees our intrepid heroes facing off against a selection of powerful foes, including “wild man” Keiji Maeda, who threatens to break Xiao Qiao in half (“but who will put me back together again?!”). But help is at hand in the form of “God of War” Kenshin Uesugi and his longstanding rival, Shingen Takeda’s formidable moustache. And the warrior attached to it, I guess.

How do things go? Hmm… take a look.

Continue reading Warriors Wednesday: The Solid Whack You Can Deliver with Wood – Warriors Orochi #12 →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: The Last Starfighter

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Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.

Any kid who watched the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter longed to hear those words for real — to put the skills they’d learned in video games to the test with real conflict against invading forces!

Unfortunately, Atari’s attempt to cash in on the popularity of the movie didn’t quite make it to market in time, instead finally seeing the light of day in 1986 as the hastily rebranded Star Raiders II. However, the original, fully playable prototype of the game in its original The Last Starfighter format has been well-preserved over the years… so it’s that we’ll be taking a look at in today’s video!

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

Delving Into..., Musou, Warriors Orochi

Delving into Musou: Warriors Orochi

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Regular readers will know that, for a little while now, I’ve been posting videos of my experiences with Warriors Orochi. So I figured it was probably time I wrote about it!

This realisation comes at a good time, as although I’m a significant distance away from beating the game — and I would actually like to try and “beat” it, at least in terms of completing all the missions on Normal once — I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit about how the game as a whole works.

It turns out that despite its apparently simple structure, Warriors Orochi has a formidably addictive metagame. So let’s look into where this game’s long-term appeal comes from.

Continue reading Delving into Musou: Warriors Orochi →

Essentials, Namco, One-Shots

Taiko no Tatsujin Drum ‘n’ Fun: Plastic Drums and Music Most Definitely Mix

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A little while ago, I offered my first impressions on the demo version of Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! for Nintendo Switch.

I came away from the experience less than enamoured with the game’s motion controls, but starting to understand the appeal of the game when I switched to playing with buttons.

Despite my slightly tepid response to the demo, I came to the conclusion that this was still a game I wanted to support a Western release of… so I splurged on the £90 game-and-drum bundle which comes with a standard copy of the Switch game, and the HORI-made USB drum accessory. Let’s take a closer look!

Continue reading Taiko no Tatsujin Drum ‘n’ Fun: Plastic Drums and Music Most Definitely Mix →

Auto Modellista, Sunday Driving, Videos

Sunday Driving: More Faster Than I Was – Auto Modellista #3

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AUTOOOOO MODELIIIIISTAAAAA!

Yes, it’s that time when we strap in and go for a bit of a drive, once again in Capcom’s beautiful 2002 “Gran Turismo lite” affair, Auto Modellista.

Today we take on some tougher challenges, and either start to hit the limits of what my dear little Yaris has to offer… or perhaps my own skill ceiling. Hit the jump to see what happened.

Continue reading Sunday Driving: More Faster Than I Was – Auto Modellista #3 →

Announcements

Around the Network

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Hello! Happy Sunday. I was out all day yesterday so I didn’t have time to put together this weekly roundup. Apologies. If you care.

This week has been another fun week, though I’ve still been recovering from my cold and my wife has still been at home recovering from her surgery, so neither of us have quite been operating at full efficiency. I still managed to find some stuff to write about however, so yay for that.

Hit the jump for the weekly roundup of the week’s articles and videos from around my network of sites.

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Dragalia Lost

Dragalia Lost: Kindness and Captivity

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It’s event time again in Cygames and Nintendo’s Dragalia Lost! If you’ve not played a game like this before… get used to this endless and occasionally exhausting cycle!

The Kindness and Captivity event, which will be running until November 12, concerns a young Sylvan girl who seeks the aid of Euden and the gang in driving the Imperial forces out of her village.

Naturally, things aren’t quite as simple as they first appear, and, as these things tend to go, things culminate in a battle against a rather large and ferocious beastie.

Continue reading Dragalia Lost: Kindness and Captivity →

Essentials, Puzzlers, Shmups

Shmup Essentials: Murasaki

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As we’ve discussed on numerous previous occasions, the shoot ’em up genre is a lot more diverse than you might think.

Over the years, we’ve seen this initially straightforward genre blossom into something that encompasses a wide variety of distinct mechanics: the precise navigation of danmaku games, the pattern recognition and twitch reflexes of twin-stick shooters, the emphasis on memorisation and “risk versus reward” of Gradius-style games and plenty more besides.

One of the most interesting ways in which developers have experimented with the genre as a whole is through combining it with other genres. To date we’ve seen attempts to blend it with fighting games (such as the Suguri series), platform games (such as Rabi-Ribi) and even puzzle games. Murasaki, a 2014 release from Japanese doujin circle Katatema, falls into the latter category.

Continue reading Shmup Essentials: Murasaki →

Videos

Atari ST A to Z: F-15 Strike Eagle

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Attempts to realistically simulate things it would be near-impossible for the average person to experience have been around for a long time… even when the technology wasn’t quite up to the job.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, one of the most prolific creators of simulations — with a particular (though not exclusive) focus on military jet fighter simulators — was MicroProse, erstwhile home of Sid “Civilization” Meier. As time went on, these games got more and more satisfyingly complex and true to life… but the genre had to start somewhere!

F-15 Strike Eagle was first released in 1984 for various 8-bit computers and ported to a variety of other platforms (including the Atari ST) over the course of the next three years. It’s a fairly “arcadey” take on the jet fighter sim, but it remains enjoyable to this day… even if its core tech looks severely dated even compared to MicroProse’s own titles from just a year or two later!

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

Waifu Wednesday

Witchfu Wednesday: Patchouli Knowledge

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Happy Halloween! What better way to celebrate than with some witchy waifu funtimes?

I had to think a bit for this one. I’ve encountered a few delightful witches over my gaming career, but I’ve also already written about a couple of them in detail — most notably Alice Kamishiro from Supipara and Metallia from The Witch and the Hundred Knight.

“Why not take a bit of a sidestep, then?” I thought. Why not take a look at a character I have little more than a passing familiarity with, but would like to know more about? That way I can call it research for a Cover Game feature I’ve been mulling over for a while. And I can also make at least one person on Twitter very happy in the process. (Hi, Kenji.) So, then; let’s learn about Patchouli Knowledge together.

Continue reading Witchfu Wednesday: Patchouli Knowledge →

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