Let’s start 2022 off right with some reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com. Please click on the reviews and read as many as you like, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
After seeing the incredible success of Konami's shoot-'em-up Gradius, Sega sought to create an arcade game that could rival it. So in 1986, game designer Yoji Ishii (Flicky, Outrun, NiGHTS) came up with a concept that combined the whimsical sensibilities of Twinbee with a giddy samba-esque soundtrack to create Fantasy Zone. As a lighthearted take on side-scrolling shooters that later cemented the "cute-’em-up" subgenre.
If you ever want to know how Konami became so successful, just look at their arcade history of the 1980s. Not only were the games entertaining, but there was also a good chance that their best hits would appear on NES and a wealth of other home consoles. Life Force was no exception. Released initially as Salamander in Japan 35 years ago today, the game came to America as Life Force and received an NES port two years later.
This generation of gaming has been all about reviving and re-releasing old classic games in the name of cashing in on nostalgia, errr, preserving the history of video games. Among the latest games to make a reappearance from the dead are a pair of 16-bit LucasArts classics, namely, Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its lesser-known sequel, Ghoul Patrol, in a downloadable double-pack on all the major consoles and PC.
It was common practice for game developers to make radical design changes for the first sequel of a popular game in the early NES days. It was no different with Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Released in North America in 1988, Konami decided that a few changes were in order. The previous game primarily focused on platforming, defeating the boss of the current stage, and moving on to the next location in linear order. Conversely, Simon’s Quest took the series in a new direction with an open, Metroid-esque style of exploration and a few RPG elements to boot. Castlevania had entered a new frontier.
First up on my journey are launch games, November 2001. I have two and another on the way but I have to start with what I know best and that's Halo: Combat Evolved.
Hey, guys! 2020 has been a miserable year for the world, so thank God it's over! But it was a really good year for games. This year I was able to beat 25 games, which is almost the most I've ever done in a year. Most of you know that I'm a huge Nintendo fan, so most of these are Nintendo games or games on Nintendo consoles (although I would like to get a PS4, but not sure if that'll happen). As always, I beat some really great retro games this year too. So without further ado, here are the games I beat in 2020.
As much as Nintendo struggled with third party support on the N64, especially in Japan, they did have a fair amount of support from one major publisher, Konami. Konami developed and published some of the best output on the system that wasn't made by Nintendo's in-house developers, though they were not without their stinkers.
Two of the biggest arcade games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games were Scramble and Super Cobra. These side-scrolling tunnel shooters were produced by Konami, and were both released in the same year, with Scramble being released early in 1981 and Super Cobra being released later the same year. Both were notable for being among the earliest forced-scrolling games and for having distinct stages that flowed into one another. Konami considered Scramble and Super Cobra to be precursors to its popular Gradius games, and in some cases even listed Scramble as the first Gradius game.
One final part of my blog series on the TG-16 Mini! Last time we looked at some of the games on the Japanese PC Engine side, and now we’ll look at the rest of them. The games in this batch I’m more familiar with, because they were released in the US in some form or fashion either on this console, other consoles, or in the arcade. And they’re also made by well-known companies like Namco, Capcom, SEGA, Taito, and Konami. OK let’s finish this off!
As I mentioned in previous TG-16 Mini blogs, the Mini has two different menus you can choose from. One has US releases on the TG-16 side, and one has Japanese games on the PC Engine side. Since we’ve gone over all the US releases, now we’ll look at the Japanese ones. I’ll split these into two blog parts. In the first one we’ll look at the Japanese games I’m not so familiar with, and then in the final blog we’ll look at the games I’m more familiar with. So let’s get started!
Miniature versions of classic game consoles with pre-loaded games has become very popular in the past few years. First we got mini versions of the NES and SNES, and then SEGA came out with one for the Genesis. And now we have the Turbo Grafx-16 Mini! It was supposed to come out last year, but got delayed. Because of the Corona virus, I didn’t think it would ever come out. But a couple of months ago, I got mine in the mail! I just now got a chance to play it, so we’ll take a look at all the games on it. Because there are so many games (almost 60), I’ll have to split this up into several parts over the next few weeks.
In 1988, the Summer Olympics took place in Seoul, South Korea. Capitalizing on this event, Konami released the latest game in their Hyper Sports series, Konamic Sports in Seoul on the Famicom. The game was released a year later in the US as Track & Field II. If the original Track & Field were a person, it would be the humble, modest friend quietly entering the room. Track & Field II, on the other hand, is more like the gregarious guy that wants to be the life of the party. Instead of the meager eight sporting events of the first game, this one features 15 athletic events (11 of which were new to the NES series).
The last classic collection I got on sale recently was the Contra Collection. I’m not a big fan of Contra either, but I do like it a lot better than Castlevania. I was never very good at Contra, though. I do remember it being very popular when I was a kid in the 8- and 16-bit days. Most people I know either had it on the NES, or rented it a lot. It may not be the first run and gun game, but it is one of the first that perfected and popularized the genre. I even remember one time reading a newspaper comic strip back then where two kids were running home to play NES games, and one of the kids said “Let’s play Contra!” So anyway, let’s take a look at the Contra Collection!
So I have to admit, I’ve never been a big Castlevania fan. So why did I get this collection? Well, one, it was on sale. Can’t resist a sale. Plus I wouldn’t have bought it full price being digital only. And two, I also love classic game collections period. And three, it has one game in the series that I do really like, and it’s my favorite Castlevania game ever. It’s also never been released in the US until now. Can you guess what it is? Well you’ll just have to read on to find out! So let’s take a look at every game on this collection! And let me know in the comments section what your favorite Castlevania game is.
A few of the games I got on sale recently are three collections of Konami classic games. So today we’ll look at the collection with a bunch of Konami arcade titles. I’ll go over the other collections in the coming weeks, don’t worry. They should’ve called this the Shooter Collection, because with the exception of one game on here, they’re all shooters. So let’s take a look at what’s on here!
I set up my Xbox One again just below my Hyperkin 3. Retro first. I played some Genesis, got caught up with Xbox sales and rewards by playing NBA 2k20, and then went back into retro with a wealth of collections that are now on Xbox One.
What's Konami's single most successful game? Metal Gear Solid 2? Nope. It's Frogger.
I'm playing a lot of games from 1985-89 this month but also some new stuff that came up, older stuff, and old but not so old stuff too. I'm playing everything, but I'm thinking about '85-'89 mainly and what it all means to me, music, games, books, film, you name it. So here are a few screen shots and a list of stuff I've been playing, if that's interesting to anybody.
I don’t know if it was because there was a Spring Sale, or if it was Golden Week in Japan, or maybe because of all the Coronavirus stuff. But there have been a BUNCH of games on sale lately. A few weeks ago, I got about five games on sale on PS4 for mostly less than ten bucks each! Most of them were arcade collections. Originally they were all 20 bucks, which isn’t THAT bad anyway. But I feel that digital only collections like this are still too pricey at that amount. If they were physical copies yeah I’d pay that. But since they were only digital I decided to wait for a sale. One of the games I got from that sale was the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, which comes with seven arcade classic co-op side scrolling beat ‘em ups. There are also a bunch of neat artwork galleries in this game as well, plus you can save your games and even play them online! But since I like to talk about the games in these collections, let’s do that with this one. In the coming weeks I’ll talk about some of the other games I got on sale, too!