General gaming |
- PAX: Double Dragon Neon Brings Back the '80s, But Not in a Good Way
- PAX: Penny Arcade Adventures Bares Its Naked Inspiration
- PAX: With Hell Yeah!, Sega Does What Nintendon't: Namely, Give Us a Drill Dozer Follow-Up
- How Can Final Fantasy Versus XIII Not be a Disappointment?
- Games, Dammit! Episode 14: Remakes, Re-releases, and Re-imaginings
- The Best Video Game Glitches
- Gamers Reflect on What They'll Miss Most About the Old Days
| PAX: Double Dragon Neon Brings Back the '80s, But Not in a Good Way Posted: 06 Apr 2012 08:21 PM PDT Majesco recently announced Double Dragon Neon, an update to the classic arcade game due this summer. The "neon" in the title is less a play on "neo" and more a reference to the fact that Double Dragon was a quintessentially '80s kind of game; the roaming brawler died at the hands of Street Fighter II right around the time that Kurt Cobain waxed poetic about deodorant and the '90s sprang to life. Thus the game's interface design of this remake is drenched with electric blue and hot pink, hearkening back to the days of Miami Vice, Members Only jackets, and that one rich kid in your class who wore 20 Swatches at once on one arm, each with a little rubber guard strap over its face. But that's not the only part of Neon that feels like it blasted its way directly out of the '80s. The game as a whole is redolent of the bad part of the '80s: The part dominated by terrible home ports of arcade favorites, insipid licensed NES games, and industry-destroying market crashes. It's ugly, slow-paced, limited, and all in all comes off as... well, cheap. |
| PAX: Penny Arcade Adventures Bares Its Naked Inspiration Posted: 06 Apr 2012 07:03 PM PDT When television shows go on hiatus, they frequently return to the airwaves with a storyline that reflects the passage of time. The protagonists of Penny Arcade, on the other hand, make a point to mention the fact that the four years that have elapsed between 2008's Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 2 and the upcoming Episode 3 amounts, in-game, to all of a week. Comparing the two episodes, though, you'd be forgiven for thinking Episode 3 actually shattered the limitations of linear time and came out years before Episode 2 -- about 15 years before, to be precise. Where the first two installments of Penny Arcade's game series were contemporary-looking 3D adventures by Hothead Games, Episode 3 leaps backward three hardware generations to resemble a 16-bit RPG. |
| PAX: With Hell Yeah!, Sega Does What Nintendon't: Namely, Give Us a Drill Dozer Follow-Up Posted: 06 Apr 2012 05:05 PM PDT I was surprised to see a colorful, classic-style 2D platformer on display at Sega's PAX East booth this weekend that I'd somehow never heard of. Developed by Arkedo and due soon for release via Xbox Live Arcade and PSN -- producer Camille Guermonprez tells me they finished the game yesterday -- the evocatively named Hell Yeah! is both hyperactive and hyper-saturated. The tutorial level on demo at PAX is drenched in shades of red and offers a hint of an excellent, entertaining action platformer. What really surprised me, though, was that despite Hell Yeah!'s first impression hitting me with a tease of Sonic the Hedgehog, that sensation quickly faded as the game grew more and more reminiscent of another, far more obscure game: Game Freak's Drill Dozer, the vibrating puzzle action game the arrived to little notice in the waning days of the Game Boy Advance. |
| How Can Final Fantasy Versus XIII Not be a Disappointment? Posted: 06 Apr 2012 02:20 PM PDT Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII way back at E3 in 2006, along with its peers Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Since then, both vanilla XIII and Agito have actually seen release -- Agito under the new name "Type-0" -- and the former has even enjoyed a recent sequel. Yet Versus remains nowhere to be seen; Square didn't even bother teasing it at last year's Tokyo Game Show. |
| Games, Dammit! Episode 14: Remakes, Re-releases, and Re-imaginings Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:34 PM PDT Since Jeremy recently fled the country, I found myself in charge of our very own Games, Dammit podcast this week. And because we're down one man, I had no choice but to use this new responsibility for an ulterior motive; my discussion with Jose and Marty helped inform this brand new feature, which acts as a nice supplement to episode 14 (or vice-versa). After spending several hours writing and podcasting on the subject this week, I really can't think of much more to say aside from "enjoy!" And please, let us know what you think about remakes, re-releases, and re-imaginings in the comments section below and/or the message board of your choice (preferably ours). Jeremy will be back in two weeks with a brand new episode, so until then, have a great Easter weekend! |
| Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:31 PM PDT
Feature  The Best Video Game GlitchesThe greatest broken bits of our favorite games.By: Steve Watts April 6, 2012 Glitches happen. No matter how hard a developer tries or how much QA testing a game goes through, occasionally a bad bit of code will cause conflicts in some unforeseen way. Most of the time these are minor annoyances, and in our modern age such issues often get patched before they impact too many people. Once in a while, though, they turn out to be hilarious, beneficial, or even a vital part of a game's legacy. We've thought up a few of our favorites. What are yours? |
| Gamers Reflect on What They'll Miss Most About the Old Days Posted: 06 Apr 2012 11:00 AM PDT Gaming is rapidly changing. Whether we're talking about things becoming more digital or new business models or whatever else, the industry already looks a great deal different than it did 10 or 20 years ago and that's only going to continue in the coming decades. As with anything in entertainment that changes, people are going to yearn for the way things used to be (while also worrying about what the future will bring). For me, one of the things I miss most is the sort of manuals games used to come with. What I looked forward to most when first buying a new game, regardless of what it was, was opening the box up and flipping through the manual before actually trying the game out. And I'm not just talking about spending time devouring the pages of a manual (or whatever other paperwork a PC game would come with -- keyboard shortcut cards, tech trees, etc. -- as it installs); console and handheld game manuals had to be read cover to cover before the game went into the system. This wasn't a matter of preparing for games with no tutorials, as I treated those with in-game instructions no differently. I specifically remember reading the entire manual for Mario Party 2 -- Mario Party 2 -- before I would even stick the cart in my Nintendo 64. |
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