February is upon us, the shortest month of the year and also the “most romantic.” That’s right, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, so what better way to celebrate the day of love than by talking about shooting things in the face with arrows, battling snakes, demons, and Medusa herself? Those things just scream “I Heart You,” and with that, ladies and gentleman, allow me to present “Kid Icarus” for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Though the Dreamcast isn’t that old, it did spawn a ton of instant classic games. Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, and Soul Caliber were all spectacular games for their times and remain so today. But there was only one game that let you live out your childhood fantasy. You know the fantasy I’m talking about…the one where you put some eggs in a tank, kill a squid and watch as those eggs explode from inside the squid carcass talking and had human faces and would carry on whole conversations with you before escaping to freedom. Really? I’m the only one? Come on, I’m not the only one who had that fantasy. Anyway, for those of you noncomformists who didn’t have that particular dream, Seaman for the Sega Dreamcast was still awesome. I don’t think there’s enough meat here for a full blown review, but I just want to acknowledge this game for trying to do something different and actually incorporating meaningful voice interaction. It was nice being able to use a microphone and not have to deal with 12 year olds telling me to go back to Africa.
For those unenlightened, here’s a clip of the game, courtesy of youtube user benstylus. It’s short, but..umm..weird?
Every take notice of a character that just kinda stands out? One who’s unassuming nature makes him more conspicuous? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m kinda weird about recognizing things that don’t seem to click, so when I started the Unsolved NPC Mysteries feature here at Homestyle, there were two NPCs that I knew I had to talk about. The first was Error, but the second is this guy:
Not to brag, but I think I’m a pretty decent Mario Kart player, but that love of the game didn’t really kick off until Mario Kart 64. Something about the original just didn’t click for me, but the 3rd dimension granted by the harnessing of 64 BITS OF POWER really made the game work. Along with the pros of having cool new characters like Wario playable, who is a douche in his own right, but a likable one, came the bad, vile douchiness of this thing:
Let’s face it - 80s nostalgia is at a fever-pitch. Anything that was remotely popular in the 80s is getting a release on DVD or a reimagining/update movie or TV series. Look no further than the success of Transformers and the impending release of GI Joe for evidence of that on the big screen. These adaptations often fail when it comes to rekindling why people loved them to begin with, which brings me to the Knight Rider TV series currently airing. Has anyone seen this thing? Talk about ‘ouch.’ But that got me reminiscing about the original series and its inevitable game adaptation, Knight Rider for the NES.
Every once in a while, a gaming company did something out of the ordinary. They took the standard “white words on a black background” Game Over screen and used it to add to the game experience. We here at Homestyle want to celebrate that creativity by having a quick glimpse at these different Game Overs in what we like to call Friday Finishers.
This one is kind of a shout-out to the current economic crisis:
Really, why didn’t he quit sooner? He’s got the worst paper route on the planet. The lawn jockeys are even coming after the poor kid. He’s better off, anyway. Says right there that he stopped a thief. Perhaps a run at law enforcement is in his future.
I also just want to point out that, apparently, something is a rough job, but….I couldn’t really think of a way to finish that sentence - it’s just a rough job.
Before Monkey Ball, there was Marble Madness, one of many games that drove my 9 year-old self freaking insane. I got the premise, I got what was supposed to happen, but once I got to the level where the floor shoots the marble into the air, I was done. I could not land that thing to save my life. Thankfully, in this day and age, the internet provides me with video evidence that everyone in the world is better at certain games than I am. Here’s a pretty nifty speed-run by nesguide that shows just how good someone can be at rolling a ball around.
We at Homestyle live by our motto of “serving tasty slices” of classic and indie games, but the difficulty in that living lies in the blur between a classic and a modern game. It seems to be the trend to reboot old franchises, luring in the younger crowd while keeping a stranglehold on people who look at everything with the Mortal Kombat logo emblazened on it through rose-tinted glasses. Bionic Commando, Street Fighter, Spy Hunter…all classic games, all with updated graphics, gameplay, and mentality. Are they fun? Two of those haven’t been released yet, but the other wasn’t as good as the original, but then again, it might be these rose-tinted glasses I’m wearing.
Look, Eliot voted for Pac-Man as the biggest douche in games, but I’m going squarely with Princess Peach, formerly Princess Toadstool, but who suddenly decides she wants a first name – what the hell’s up with that? Seriously, she keeps getting caught, then Mario has to come along and save her. She is constantly putting Mario in danger; he’s falling off cliffs into pits, or pits with lava, or pits of lava with snakes and dogs, or pits of lava with snakes and dogs and when the dogs bark, they shoot bees; they could be there - you’ve never seen what it’s like down there.
Football season is upon us, with the playoffs under way, so I thought that I’d do something I didn’t really anticipate doing - review a sports game. I know, I know, sports franchises are big sellers on a yearly basis, but something about stat checking and formation calling never really appealed to me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy football as a sport, but not as a hobby, and always felt it was missing something. Something like mines, or jetpacks, or ref murdering. Fortunately, back in 1993, Electronic Arts had a similar revelation and released Mutant League Football on the Sega Genesis.
