Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Yoshi's Island (Super NES, 1995)

Nintendo was in an interesting position in 1995. With the Sega Genesis more or less vanquished, Nintendo could have easily phoned things in that year... However, they were faced with new threats in the form of the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation. These spiffy new 32-bit systems threatened to make the Super NES look old and outdated. With the N64 a year away, Nintendo had to do something to keep their fans from jumping ship and spending their money on the competition - something plenty of them did regardless. They did their best to stave off the enemy at the gates by continuing their parade of high-quality games throughout 1995, with titles like Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country 2, and this one... the aptly-named Yoshi's Island.


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Donkey Kong Country (Super NES, 1994)

And now... Advanced Computer Modeling! Silicon Graphics! Ultra 64! Nintendo Power! The Treehouse! Rare! 32 Megabits! One of the greatest soundtracks in gaming history! Magical times for all! This game was originally supposed to be for the Nintendo Ultra 64 Ultra 64 Nintendo 64, but they managed to transform it into an SNES game for the ages.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Aladdin (Sega Genesis, 1993)

For 1993 I'm reviewing a game that existed on both the Genesis and the SNES. You'd think that this is one of those cases where Sega... does what Ninten-does. However, it was an entirely different game on each system. While the SNES version has Aladdin jumping on the heads of enemies to defeat them ("plzdon'tsue" said Nintendo to parents), the Genesis version has Aladdin slicing foes up with a scimitar. Bad-ass!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Space Megaforce (Super NES, 1992)

As those who have been reading this saga of posts are already aware of, I'm following the progression of space shooters a bit. Not a lot... just as far as the NES, SNES, and N64 go. Here we have what I consider the best space shooter I've ever played: Space Megaforce (or as it is known in Japan, where it was far more popular, Super Aleste). This is a great game that more people need to know exists, so for this one I'll be doing a lot of discussion of the gameplay.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis, 1991)

As a kid, I used to lay awake and think about how Nintendo was "where it's at", while never giving Sega a real chance. Now I'm all grown and I realize that rooting for one side or the other is pointless when they're both good. Competition from Sega, spearheaded by Sonic the Hedgehog, is what pushed Nintendo to bring their absolute best in the mid 90's. Competition from the Sony Playstation pushed Nintendo to finally let go of the cartridge format. Competition from the Playstation 3 and XBox 360 has ensured that Nintendo won't be putting out another non-HD system in the age of HD. Competition from the PS4 and XBox720 will ensure that the Nintendo 7th doesn't have a game lineup consisting primarily of Princess Toadstool hentai RPGs, at least after 2015. Competition is good. With this appreciation in mind, I finally gave Sonic a go.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Golvellius (Master System, 1988)


Behold, a game that no one played. This was Sega's answer to Zelda... but how good was it? My last couple of posts (Gradius and Legend of Zelda) were pretty long-winded about the gameplay. For the next few posts I'm going to be a bit more to-the-point about these games and what I thought of them. There will be jokes. Punch and pie.