Tag Archives: video games

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Wavy Navy

1 Comment

I’ve always kind of been fascinated by games that get “bad” reviews. And my gaming experience over the last few years has demonstrated that it’s always best to make up your own mind about things rather than going purely by one person’s rant — as amusing as those rants can be sometimes.

Today’s Atari 8-bit title, Wavy Navy from Sirius Software, is a great example of this. Poorly received by at least one reviewer for its similarities to the system’s excellent port of Galaxian, it’s actually a rather fun fixed shooter with an interesting twist.

Sometimes it pays to go back and revisit those “bad” games… in many instances they’re actually nowhere near as bad as you might think!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Community, One-Shots

Why Collect?

16 Comments

Collecting games is a major hobby for many people — whether they’re into modern titles or retro stuff.

Thankfully, although certain portions of the industry are trying desperately to push us towards an all-digital (or, worse, an all-streaming) future, there are still plenty of companies out there who understand that there is still very much a collector’s market: people want to fill their shelves with their favourite games, and they want cool goodies to go with them.

Why bother, though? Aren’t you just cluttering up your limited living space?

Continue reading Why Collect? →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

2 Comments

Happy Sunday everyone! Apologies for the quietness of the weekend just passed (including a lack of an Atari A to Z Flashback video) — I spent yesterday at Digitiser Live in London, so didn’t have much time to do anything else!

It was a really great day. If you’d like to find out more, check out my daily personal blog over on Patreon; suffice to say it was a pretty magical experience, and I’m glad I took the time to go and see that shambolic nonsense. Normal business will resume this week!

So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at what you might have missed this week, then.

Continue reading Around the Network →

Essentials, NES

NES Essentials: Wrecking Crew

2 Comments

Wrecking Crew is one of Nintendo mascot Mario’s more underappreciated adventures — and a fairly underappreciated entry in the NES’ overall library, in fact.

First released for Famicom in June of 1985 and subsequently as one of the 17 launch titles for the Western Nintendo Entertainment System, Wrecking Crew is something of a departure from what you might typically expect from a Mario game — even outside of the main Super Mario Bros. series.

It’s a puzzle game with a strong emphasis on strategic thinking and forward planning rather than fast action or precise platforming, and it’s actually been one of my favourite games in the NES’ library since I first encountered it via the Wii’s Virtual Console service. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading NES Essentials: Wrecking Crew →

Essentials, Racers, Sega Ages

Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon

6 Comments

Trivia of the day: the shiny red car in the original OutRun is not, as many people assume (and as both numerous sites on the Internet and some incarnations of the game’s original manual claim), a Ferrari Testarossa; it’s just a car designed to look uncannily like a Ferrari Testarossa — in other words, it’s a thoroughly unlicensed knockoff.

The fact that the car in OutRun is almost-but-not-quite a Ferrari is probably why this first game in the series has been so widely ported and still remains relevant today, while the officially Ferrari-branded OutRun 2 and its expanded quasi-sequel OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast remain tragically trapped in licensing limbo.

The original OutRun has been ported to enough platforms to make the original Final Fantasy and Ys games blush over the years, as well as putting in occasional guest appearances in games such as Shenmue 2 and Yakuza 0. The latest direct port at the time of writing is for Nintendo Switch as part of the Sega Ages collection and is the work of emulation maestros M2, so let’s once again put our foot to the floor and get driving.

Continue reading Sega Ages: OutRun – Chasing the Horizon →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Purple Saturn Day

Leave a comment

You know how these days Japanese games are often stereotyped as being “weird”? Well, in the early to mid ’90s, it was French developers who were saddled with this perception.

To be fair, it was at least partially justified — although it may perhaps have been a little more polite to refer to these developers’ works as being “creative” rather than “weird”.

They don’t come much more creative/weird than Purple Saturn Day, a game developed by a branch of ERE Informatique that claimed to be receiving their inspiration directly from an interdimensional technological god-entity named Exxos, and a title that put an interesting sci-fi twist on the multi-sports formula.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Jessica de Alkirk

4 Comments

I thought I’d go classic for this week’s Waifu Wednesday.

I’ll freely admit that it’s been a very long time — far too long, in fact — since I played Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete on PS1, but back when I did play it for the first time, I fell in love. Several times. With the game, with its setting, with Working Designs’ localisation… and with Jessica.

’90s waifus still got it going on, y’know.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Jessica de Alkirk →

Videos, Warriors Wednesday

Warriors Wednesday: Overly Ambitious – Warriors Orochi #47

1 Comment

There I was, thinking that things were going a bit too well and things felt a bit “easy” as I started the Wei campaign on Normal difficulty. “Why not try Hard?” I thought.

This, it turns out, was a bit of a mistake. It appears that at the start of this campaign I’m in a bit of a limbo, where having acquired over a hundred levels’ worth of passive abilities in the previous storylines, my characters are now a bit too tough to have any real challenges placed before them on Normal, but not quite tough enough to stand up to the challenges Hard presents them with.

Oh well. At least now we know, eh?

Podcast

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 25 – WTF Space Tarantulas

1 Comment

Bonan whatever it is in your area, and welcome along to another episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my good self and a highly caffeinated Mr 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 (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. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

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

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 25 – WTF Space Tarantulas →

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Delving Into...

Delving Into Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – #2

1 Comment

One thing that I’ve been gradually learning over the course of the early Castlevania games that I’ve played so far is that it doesn’t always pay to be greedy.

Indeed, sometimes it’s in your best interests to forego potential rewards in favour of just proceeding onwards more safely. After all, you can’t make good use of those rewards if you’re dead, can you?

Castlevania III plays with this idea quite a lot, and it presents a few takes on it over the course of its early stages.

Continue reading Delving Into Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse – #2 →