Warriors Orochi 3

Warriors Orochi 3: First Steps in a Ruined World

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I, if it has not already been made abundantly clear, love the Warriors series as a whole. And I’ve found myself particularly enjoying the Warriors Orochi branch.

Warriors Orochi’s core appeal is that it successfully divorces both the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors casts from their original contexts, allowing them to break free from the stories they’ve been telling since the PlayStation 2 days. Instead, they get the chance to have a bit of fun.

Well, “fun” might not be quite the right word, given that Warriors Orochi 3 starts off with all of them (except for three, conveniently) dying horribly. But it’s certainly fun for us.

Continue reading Warriors Orochi 3: First Steps in a Ruined World →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: River Raid

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River Raid is probably my favourite game on the Atari 8-bit. The Atari 2600 version is arguably more well-known, but the Atari 2600 version — which also appeared on the ill-fated Atari 5200 — is superior in pretty much every way.

For the unfamiliar, River Raid is one of the original vertically scrolling shoot ’em ups, and made use of some clever programming techniques to squeeze the entire game into a tiny amount of space. It’s one of Activision’s finest games of the 8-bit era, and a game I still enjoy on a regular basis today.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Evercade, Mega Drive, Xeno Crisis and Tanglewood

Xeno Crisis: 16-Bit Mayhem

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One of the most delightful things about the modern video game scene is the fact that a lot of developers are willing to go back to classic hardware and make new games.

In doing so, they can create games that feel authentic thanks to their working within the limitations of the original host platform, but which perhaps incorporate some more modern design sensibilities that the gaming community as a whole has figured out over the years.

Xeno Crisis is an unapologetically old-school arcade-style shooter, designed specifically for the Mega Drive and ported to a variety of platforms. That original Mega Drive version is also available as part of a double-game cartridge (alongside the excellent but very different Tanglewood) for the Evercade retro gaming system, and it’s that version specifically that we’re looking at today.

Continue reading Xeno Crisis: 16-Bit Mayhem →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

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Greetings, humans, I hope you are well, and I hope you’ve had a pleasant week; I’ve actually had a rather good one, which is nice.

Christmas is fast approaching, so I hope you’re all stocked up on presents and aren’t having to brave the plague-ridden high streets to get the important people in your life some sort of tat they don’t need but which you thought they “might like”. If you’re struggling for ideas, consider an Evercade; they’re eminently affordable and there’s a massive library of retro classics to play on it now! Nonspon, or whatever the kids say; I just really like that thing.

Anyway, that aside, let’s check out what you might have missed in the last week! Join me after the jump.

Continue reading Around the Network →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: RealSports Basketball

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As we’ve seen a few times already on this series, one of the great things about the Atari Flashback Classics collection is that it provides an official way to enjoy some games that never got released back in the day.

One such example is RealSports Basketball for both Atari 2600 and Atari 5200, neither of which made it to release back in the day despite being listed on Atari’s schedules up until quite late. The great “video game crash” of 1983 probably didn’t help matters, but… well, make your own mind up.

Check out the 2600 version in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atelier

Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland – Fourth-Generation Alchemy

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cropped-atelier-megafeature-header-1-8868334This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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Given that there was a gap of eight years and six games between Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland and Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland, it will doubtless not surprise you to learn that the latter’s mechanics aren’t just a rehash of the former’s.

Instead, upon the game’s initial announcement in Japan’s Weekly Famitsu, Gust revealed that the new game would feature an alchemy system that blended elements of the classic Arland games with more recent additions to the formula — specifically, incorporating some elements that had proven popular from the primarily PS4-based Mysterious series.

The result is a mechanical core to the game that is accessible to newcomers but filled with a considerable amount of hidden depth — and which feels fresh and interesting to series veterans, even if they’re coming to Atelier Lulua directly from the previous three Arland games. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland – Fourth-Generation Alchemy →

Evercade A to Z, Videos

Evercade A to Z: Super Robin Hood

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The Oliver Twins are, it’s fair to say, probably best known for their Dizzy series of arcade adventures on 8- and 16-bit home computers. But they made a bunch of other interesting games, too.

Super Robin Hood for NES is a reimagining of the twins’ very first commercially successful game, originally released for Amstrad CPC. It’s a fun platformer that gives you a sense of freely exploring an interesting environment, despite it actually leading you on a linear path from start to finish.

Check it out in the video below, read my writeup for more information — and, of course, don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

One-Shots

Quantum Theory: Tower Toppler

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The longer I run this site, the more it becomes clear that immediate, embargoed, day-one reviews of video games haven’t been doing a lot of titles justice for a very long time now — right back to the PlayStation 2 era at the very least, and probably beyond.

The trouble is, thanks to the Metacritic-fuelled world we live in, if a game scores poorly in those initial reviews, in most cases it is doomed to languish in obscurity, even if there are interesting things to say about it. There are occasional outliers — the wonderful Nier is probably the best example — but for every game that manages to claw its way out of the darkness to get some degree of recognition, there are myriad others destined to be forgotten.

Which brings us to Quantum Theory, a third-person shooter developed by the people behind the Project Zero series. Almost universally panned by Western reviewers on its original release in 2010, this is not a game that anyone looks back on particularly fondly — or at all, in most cases. But I thought it sounded interesting. And you know what? It is. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Quantum Theory: Tower Toppler →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Karting Grand Prix

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Sometimes, it’s good to play a genuinely awful game just to remind yourself how good we have it most of the time. And sometimes you end up very pleasantly surprised.

Sometimes, though, a game is just irredeemably terrible and no amount of positive intention will save it. Sadly, such is the case with Karting Grand Prix for Atari ST by Anco — though I will add a disclaimer at this point. This video was based off the version of the game that Automation archived among their enormous collection of floppy disk menus, and is seemingly an incomplete or earlier version of the game; the final retail release does run slightly faster, but that doesn’t do much to rescue this absolute tyre fire.

Enjoy my suffering in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for happier times!

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Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Takanashi Kiara

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Since their debut in September of 2020, the girls of Hololive English have well and truly settled into their roles as virtual entertainers, bringing joy to hundreds of thousands of people every day.

Back when HoloEN first launched, we took a specific look at Amelia Watson and Ninomae Ina’nis, but there are still several three more delightful characters in the lineup well worth celebrating. And with the unfortunate (and apparently accidental) banning of Takanashi Kiara’s channel earlier today — a mistake which YouTube-kun has since rectified after implied murderous threats from a certain rapping reaper — I figured it was well worth giving everyone’s favourite phoenix a bit of time in the spotlight.

You can’t keep a good phoenix down, after all — although Final Fantasy might have you believe otherwise — so get your bargain bucket ready and let’s give that bird some love. That came out with potentially filthy implications, but they honestly weren’t intentional. Please disregard.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Takanashi Kiara →

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