My trek through the 90s starts tomorrow, but what the heck. I decided to break up each year into multiple blogs to cover more games and make it as fun as I can. Here are some arcade games I wish I had played in 1990.
I'm finally back in the gaming groove this week and got some good time in on two more PS3 games.
Gotta a little break from gaming this mid-weekend of mine, and so here's what I've done so far.
Last year of the 80s and nearly the end of October. I'll be remembering the 90s in November, but this is '89 and what I recall most fondly (or wish to play now in some cases).
It dawned on me I haven't really replayed all the God of War games on PS3, and I thought I'd add the first two Skylanders games to the list for trophy hunting reasons, and... REASONS!
More car trouble, and so less gaming, contrary to what might be expected. I game at MK's place, and if it's hard to get there - takes me an hour by bus -, I don't game. But I got a mostly full day in and actually finished a game for once. Read on.
Halloween is coming up soon, and I’ve got some treats for you! No tricks! It’s a new batch of game reviews I’ve recently written at GamerDad! Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
Ultros immediately drew me in with its gorgeous neon sci-fi aesthetic, but it kept me hooked by completely subverting my expectations as the game progressed. At first glance, and by the developer’s description, it appears to be yet another Metroidvania game - which, frankly, have gotten to be extremely plentiful and much less interesting due to their abundance. But quickly, you realize this is no normal Metroidvania - nor is it quite a roguelike despite the cyclical nature of the experience. It borrows these designs to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Blue Fire is a game I like, but I don’t love. It’s a game I want to love - it draws influences from some of my favorite games, broadly 3D Platformers but with a bit of Zelda, Metroid, and Dark Souls thrown in for good measure. But despite this, it just doesn’t all come together as well as I hoped.
Not so many games really. Actually, my favorite thing this year wasn't games but audio recording. My best friend and I would get together in breaks from our different colleges and go on road trips. Our favorite thing was to record ourselves doing skits or other nonsense on cassette tapes while listening to our favorite music. I still have them, some 30 or so. I converted them to CDs in the early 2000s and stored them as files on a now defunct hard drive. However, MK and I would go to arcades still here and there. I watched a lot of movies as well.
1986 was the year I went to college which likely distracted me from the NES and SMS releases. I was most concerned with my Apple computer that year, but I'll go through all I've subsequently gotten into and some notable facts (notable to me anyway).
1985 was a little light in gaming for me but it was notable to most of us in the west as the year the NES was test marketed in the U.S. that October (and nationwide in Sept. '86). I was unaware but it can't go unmentioned. Here's everything I remember clearly.
I've been without a car this week which has made it hard to get to MK's for gaming, but I managed it one day by bus. Here are the results.
Beat, Heart, Beat is an action-rhythm platformer that puts a unique spin on the auto-runner, incorporating a midwest emo soundtrack and a truly bizarre cast of characters and premise. Through fifteen unique levels/songs, you’ll avoid obstacles, attack in three directions, chain combos, and try to do it all to the beat to earn the highest scores. The short quest relies heavily on replayability and high score chasing and your enjoyment will likely hinge on your affinity for the distinctive midwest emo soundtrack.
But mostly video games. I noticed "leisure arts" on a book cover just now and thought it funny. '84 is the year I became a PC gamer for the most part. Bye bye to consoles for the rest of the 80s. That stuff's for kids, or so I must've been thinking as a late teen. I'm still going to mention NES and SMS later though. Who can resist that.
Oh gaming. Perhaps I was spending more time on sports, records and photography, but there was plenty of arcade visits still going on, not to mention playing my friends' consoles at their homes. Here's what I played and remember.
Let's dig into 1982! I got games, games, games, and a little bit about music at the end 'cause I was into it then.
Up until Lies of P released, I thought it was impossible for anybody not named FromSoftware to make a great Souls-like. We’ve certainly seen plenty of teams adapt the formula to 2D successfully, but despite the similarities, those titles feel more like variants on the classic Metroidvania formula than a proper Souls-styled game. False Hero, though, leaves no question where it draws influence - this 3D Souls-like, the product of a single developer, is imbued with everything that made the Souls series great. It even manages to add its own twist to the formula, creating its own identity in the process.
Continuing the share, my games of the 80s, maybe a few others if I'm into it. This is 1981.
It’s been far too long since we’ve seen a proper entry in the Castlevania series. After Igarashi was unceremoniously removed from working on the franchise, it basically went stagnant. MercurySteam worked on the three Lords of Shadows games, but even the last of that subseries was released twelve years ago. Enter Belmont’s Curse, the newest entry in the series, which now rests in the hands of Evil Empire, best known for their work on Dead Cells.
I'm not really playing any 80s games this month (I'm still trying to weed my collection) but I am doing the 80s in other media this month, so I thought I'd at least write something about the games I played from this decade.