Game Ads and Double Kick Heroes
Published on October 15, 2022 3:41 PM
3 minute read
998 Views

I got several Batman Gotham Knights comics recently and found them loaded with game ads from that time, early 2000s. Here are the pics:

gbcjc

Game Boy Color with Bionic Commando: Elite Forces on the screen and Jackie Chan: Stunt Master for Playstation. 

MIB4wheel

Men In Black for GBC and 4 Wheel Thunder for Dreamcast.

WildArms2

Two-page ad for Wild Arms 2 for Playstation. 

speedpunks

Twp-pager for Speed Punks on Playstion. Screenshots made me think of that Crash Bandicoot kart racer initially. 

EQ

Two-pager of Everquest: Ruins of Kunark for PC. 

rallynightmare

Rally Challenge 2000 for N64 and Nightmare Creatures II for Playstation.

terminusfighter

Terminus on PC and Fighter Destiny 2 for N64. 

I don't think I've played any of these games, then or now. 

But I did play Double Kick Heroes the other day. It was a Games with Gold freebie that I tried and soon got hooked on until I finished the main story. It's a rhythm/shooter game, if that makes any sense. You have a ribbon of notes along the bottom showing you the moments to hit the buttons and above you have your car/stage/gunship that shoots when you hit the buttons destroying enemies trying to catch you. The story is pretty neat as you travel a wasteland created by zombies. You are a metal band possessing a car loaded with weapons. The dialog and character names reference all sorts of metal trivial which is fun to recognize. In between levels you visit locations where your band members can talk to thinly veiled heroes of metal history. 

There are a dozen or more real, presumably current, metal bands providing tracks for the levels. They are all pretty good. I only recognized one of them, Gojira, but even though most of them were unknown to me, I enjoyed the tracks a lot.

You can play story mode or just dive into levels. There are multiple difficulty levels to give you a crazy challenge if you wish. I played story mode to the end on easy difficulty. My fingers were plenty jittery enough after all that rapid button pressing. I played a few single levels and a few on the highest difficulty to check it out. Wow does it get faster than you can see the notes. Clearly you have to do it by ear solely to manage the tougher modes. 

I enjoyed it and laughed when I saw this screen below. 

dkh

That's your band there chillin' with a demon in the underworld. 

Comments
5
Posted on October 16, 2022 7:28 PM

Those ads look like they were printed around the time I was reviewing games for The Dallas Morning News.  I remember previewing that Jackie Chan game at E3 anyway.

Posted on October 19, 2022 7:11 PM

Y2K. I got a few more from the third Batman Gotham Knights comic I got. I'm putting them in the next blog. 

Posted on October 21, 2022 11:30 AM

Yup, Y2K, I was definitely writing for the newspaper then.  I was at the top of my game around that time.

Posted on October 16, 2022 10:44 PM

Those remind me of old EGM ads. Much nostalgia. 

Posted on October 19, 2022 7:14 PM

I finally got the physical Game Informer mag to ship to me. I so miss all the mags. I used to get a bunch of them.