Opinions vary greatly as to which PC Engine shoot ’em up is the best — largely because there are so many of the damn things. I most certainly am not complaining.
Most people can agree that Hudson Soft’s excellent Soldier Blade is near the top of the rankings, though, thanks to its high-speed action, its satisfying power-up systems and its excellent music. It’s also highly accessible to shoot ’em up newcomers, so if you suck at the more intense titles — like I do — then this is a great title to cut your teeth on.
The design’s weady! Ergonomicawwy tewwific! We’ve conquered the sector! We’ve nuuuuked them! We’ve won!
Ah, Mega-Lo-Mania, such an iconic game — and not just for those wonderful speech samples, but also for its excellent gameplay. Many people regard this as one of the first examples of a real-time strategy game — though it does things a little differently from its fellow genre progenitor Dune 2, which came out a year later.
After enjoying the Atari 5200 adaptation of Star Raiders a few weeks back, I thought it was probably time we looked at its most well-known and well-loved incarnation: the original Atari 8-bit release from 1979.
Regarded by many as the “killer app” for the Atari 8-bit home computers, at least on its original release, Star Raiders is an all-time classic — and a genre-defining game that helped to establish first-person, real-time space combat games as a viable genre. It’s been one of my favourite games ever since I first played it, so let’s celebrate it the way it was always meant to be enjoyed.
Welcome to a new-look, new-format podcast! Sorry it’s been so long again, but we’re both busy chaps! All being well, both my good buddy Chris Caskie of CCaskieArt and I should be able to “do” this new format a bit more often, though, so we hope you like it!
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 and listen on Spotify. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!
Enjoy the podcast in video and audio formats below:
This time around, we chat about the excitement of all things Evercade that are in the pipeline, marvel at the moribund monstrosity that was E3 2021 and talk about Steam Next Fest’s creative demos. Plus there’s plenty of talk about what we’ve been playing and recent happenings in gaming.
We hope you enjoy the new format — please look forward to a variety of new stuff in the podcast playlist soon!
One of the recurring things that has come up time and time again as we’ve been looking at Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book is how this game very consciously does things differently from what has come before.
And, of course, it’s evident in the combat system. This is a particularly interesting aspect of Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book to analyse in detail, because superficially its combat mechanics might resemble the last six games in the series to one degree or another — but in fact, things unfold quite differently. Let’s explore!
One of the oldest video games out there is the old “Star Trek” game that people used to play on mainframe computers. Like many other mainframe games, this was ported to home systems in various forms over the years.
One of the most surprising ports of this game came in the form of Stellar Track for the Atari 2600, a surprisingly impressive and full-featured version for a platform not best known for its text-based games. And if you enjoy boring people with retro game trivia at parties as much as I do, you can also tell them that this was one of just three 2600 games that was exclusively sold at Sears through their Tele-Games label.
Retro games are wonderful, aren’t they? That’s why I’ve set up a new series that is just for exploring whatever retro nonsense I feel like enjoying from week to week.
Today, we take a look at Midtown Madness 3 on the original Xbox — yes, like it or not the original Xbox most certainly is “retro” these days — and have a lot of fun with the Paris bus.
If you like flashing lights, boy do I have the game for you. If you have a problem with flashing lights, maybe steer clear of this one.
Llamatron for Atari ST is one of the legendary Jeff Minter’s many takes on classic arcade games. This time around, he sets his sight on the classic Robotron, which was already a fairly psychedelic experience filled with pulsing colours and flashes of light, but Llamatron takes all that to a whole other level.
The Atari 8-bit community is still alive and well — and many of the folks involved with it are just as active today as they were back in the good old days!
One mainstay of the community for all these years is Paul Lay, who put together some fabulous machine code games as type-in listings for Page 6 magazine all those years ago, and is still putting out top-notch software for the platform today. Here’s Runner Bear, programmed with the intention of being the first Atari 8-bit game of 2020.
As is tradition for the series at this point, Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book shakes things up considerably when it comes to its core alchemy mechanics.
And again in keeping with past installments, the reinvention isn’t so radical that it feels incongruous with the rest of the series, but it’s distinctive enough to make Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book stand out nicely amid its many, many peers.
So today let’s take a closer look at that alchemy system — along with how the people around the town of Kirchen Bell can help out with your studies!
