Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 9 - Thunder Gun

Time for more of Wiki-Wiki-Wild Arms 3, as I roll into the tower-base of the villains. Is this the end? Not quite. We got a ways to go yet in the RPG that never ends.

Saturday, December 22, 2018

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past #4 - Dark Palace, Swamp Palace

While Mordor in Lord of the Rings prominently features both an evil mountain and an evil tower, Zelda combines the two. And somewhere, a lawyer for the Tolkien Estate just popped a chub.


Monday, December 17, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 8 - Relentless Insomnia

This is hands-down the nicest, most relaxed screenshot of any game ever. It won't get any better than this, Clive.


Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu, Part 2 - Pikachu es Muy Suave!

 Pokémon is back. Look at how angry Brock looks back there. Ya know, with the way Giovanni never actually shows up at the eighth gym, they should have named HIM Brock.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 7 - Children of Malik Attack

It's a new dawn as our heroes patrol the desert in their new mega-tank. I like how the "oceans" of this game's world are actually all just desert. It's emblematic of the very real problems faced by Filgaia in this era.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 6 - Sexy Witch Costume

If you're staring at this picture with your head cocked to the side like a dog, let me explain: Malik has been cloning Zero Suit Samuses in the evil lab of the Advocacy. Not sure if this is to take over the world or just for...sex purposes.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Monday, November 12, 2018

Top 15 RPG Overworld Themes of the 90's

Today I'm looking at some of the greatest overworld themes from 90's RPGs. That might seem like an oddly-specific kind of list; the fact is, some of the greatest video game music out there can be found on the world maps of 16- and 32-bit RPGs. Any music that plays on a world map or overworld qualifies. I'm limiting it to one entry per game, which makes for some tough decisions when it comes to the several games on the list with multiple great overworld tunes. I can't promise there won't be a ton of Final Fantasy featured here. It's a subjective list; your mileage may vary. If I left a particularly great overworld theme out, comment below and let me know.

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 4 - Nuclear Winter Salesmen

Many, many, many months later, Wild Arms 3 continues. Last time, I finished the first of the four chapters. Today, chapter 2 begins as our heroes pensively look out from a cliff, the wind billowing under their luxurious skirts.

Monday, October 8, 2018

Dragon Quest XI - Magic Key Guide

When and where to use the Magic Key (red locked doors). This part of the game reminds me of Chrono Trigger's sealed chests/doors.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Nintendo Power Review #13 - Volume 42

For some reason there's an error in the video in this one, just like the previous video, where you see a still shot for a minute or so. I haven't figured out what the issue is, and re-editing the video just moves this image-pause to a different part of the video. Whatever. At the moment I'm just happy to be able to get these videos online at all.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Nintendo Power Review #12 - Volume 73

Season 2 of the NP reviews continues with Volume 73, as my slow saunter through covering the first 100 issues continues.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Secret of Evermore: Balance Patch Playthrough

This one's all on video, and could potentially be an interesting companion piece to the post series on the game. For this playthrough I used the Balance Patch, which has both positive and negative changes to the gameplay...


Saturday, June 23, 2018

Wild Arms 3 (Playstation 2, 2002)

Back in 1999/2000, I was really into the original Wild Arms. It was one of what seemed like a hundred rad RPGs that we got during the golden age of the late 90's PlayStation. It took me months to finish the game, and the release week for Wild Arms 2 happened to be right after I did. Completely coincidental, as I didn't even know a sequel was in development. That was pretty awesome, one of my many good gaming memories from the era. A couple rentals later and I finished Wild Arms 2, which I thought was even better than the original.

For some reason I never checked out further games in the series, but Wild Arms 3 was always on my radar. Lately I've been wanting to play an early-00's era RPG that I've never played before, and this one made the most sense. It now has a PlayStation 4 re-release with trophies and improved resolution that one can get for about the price of the original PS2 version, so it's a better time than ever to check out Wild Arms 3. I started playing this a couple years ago and it's time to finally play the rest.


Friday, June 15, 2018

Nintendo Power Review #10 - Volume 88 (Hot Sauce Challenge II)

In the season finale of the Nintendo Power review series, I take on another series of spicy wings while reading the Nintendo 64 debut issue. More episodes are in the works for later in the Summer.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

A Journey Through Snow Music (Updated)

Here are my Top 20 Snow Tunes from various games over the years. This was tough to put in some kind of order, as all of these tunes are pretty rad. I mainly just wanted to run through the snowy themes that I've heard over the years and talk about them a bit.

Updated: A trio of new tracks added, now a Top 20 rather than a mere Top 17.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Nintendo Power Review #9 - Volume 10

In this video, I cover the landmark Volume 10 of Nintendo Power. It's a true blast from the past. Also, the Joker is eaten by an adorable cat! Tune in now!


Wednesday, April 25, 2018

WoW: Legion is Radical to the Maximum - Side B

Once the Tomb of Sargeras is cleared, you can see Argus looming in the skies over Azeroth. Really cool stuff here. This is it, the final battle. Soon, it will be the end of the world. ...of Warcraft.

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Nintendo Power Review #7 - Volume 46

Back with another NP review video. I like the thumbnail on this one, even though it might have been more appropriate to save for something like the Mario World issue. This was a random choice from the shelf rather than something planned. That's right, this is the first randomly-chosen issue in these reviews. I lucked out, though, because it turned out to be the Dragon Warrior IV issue.

The hard camera was recorded at 1080p, the short close-ups of the issue are 4K. The final overall combined video is 1080p, so the close-ups won't look as good as they could...they'll still look pretty damn good though. One of these days I'll finalize a video at 4K, but only if all of the imagery in it is recorded at 4K so it isn't upscaling or downscaling or doing anything weird. Might try that for the next one.

Tune in next weekend for another review. Other site plans: The final WoW post, a finishing of Wild Arms 3, and a foray into the Mana series.

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

The Last Airbender (2010)

Today I'm taking a look at a very unspecial movie. Based on the hit Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender, this movie is a dismal offering from director M. Night Shyamalan.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Axelay (Super NES, 1992)

 This is one of my favorite 16-bit space-shooters. It's probably second only to Space Megaforce; oddly enough, it also came out at around the same time. It's weird that the Super NES, a system with a notable deficiency of space shooters, dropped its best two in the same calendar month. I suspect this cut into the sales of both games dramatically as they were forced to compete. Regardless, Axelay is pretty awesome, and today I'm going to show you why.

Friday, January 26, 2018

Nine Games That Were Huge Letdowns

Today I'm going to look at nine games that I had high initial expectations for, expectations that were shattered once I got ahold of them. This is a bit different from my Games I Tapped Out On Midway Through and Games I Didn't Enjoy But Still Finished lists in that, whether I finished these games or not, they didn't live up to the hype in any way.

Note: There are a few "no-brainer" entries that won't be on the list (for instance, No Man's Sky) because I haven't played them. Also, there are some games that very much deserve to be on this list (Fable) but won't because I played them well after release (aka after I knew better than to expect anything). In short, this list is limited to things that I played while the hype was still strong, only to find them to be a huge letdown. Ranked in order of my own personal disappointment. This is entirely subjective, and your mileage may vary. Also, nothing on this list is necessarily a bad game. Some of them might fall into that category, while others might just be things that didn't jive with me personally.