Seeing as I’m currently filling up my blog with anime-themed content, something which it was seriously lacking, I thought I’d take this opportunity to review a famously not-very-good NES game called Fist Of The North Star.
Based on the classic anime series, this game has received something of a reputation for being pretty bad.
Now I’ll tell you right now: it’s not THAT bad.
In this how-to video, Joe walks you through the process of reviving your blinking NES by boiling the 72-pin connector. No need to buy any aftermarket replacement!
Andrew is back for the annual 1 More Castle Halloween Spooktacular! We talk about arcade cabinets, survival shelters, destructive home renovation practices, and zombie monkeys.
It feels like two decades have passed since the last time I reviewed a Super Nintendo game after playing it for the first time. My last entry into this series was Donkey Kong Country way back in the beginning of September. I had a week of vacation in there and I doubled up on the N64 Connoisseur pieces in order to properly celebrate my one year anniversary here at 1 More Castle. With all of that out of the way and me back on my proper life schedule, I wanted to play something epic. I wanted to play something that people talk to me about every time I mention the SNES and I have to be that lamewad who didn’t play it. The time finally came for me to play Super Metroid.
I rarely cover arcade games and I’m not really sure why. Lack of access to cabinets, maybe? I changed that recently. A few weeks ago I was at Funspot with my fiance. (Oh yeah, I’m engaged, whoo hoo!) They have all sorts of arcade games there. Shooting, driving, platformers, timed games, and even the button mash games. You know, the games where the ‘skill’ is who can pound a few buttons the hardest, like Track N Field. This one game, Power Drive, has taunted me, hurt my fingers, stressed my wrists, and generally tired me out since I was a child over 25 years ago.. and I keep going back to it. WHY? What is it about?
Finally, Halloween is upon us and you know what that means: it’s the end of Vampire Month!
Not too long ago, I checked out Castlevania: Bloodlines for the Sega Genesis and, because reviewing another Castlevania game would be somewhat redundant, I thought I’d take a good look at the Sega Master System’s answer to the popular franchise: Master Of Darkness.
If you’re a regular listener of this wonderful site’s wonderful podcast, 1 More Podcastle, then you’ll recall Master Of Darkness as one of the Retro Showdown picks from episode 17.
It lost out to Advanced Lawnmower Simulator…
You could call this game a Castlevania ripoff but if you grew up with a Sega Master System, then you couldn’t have cared less. Sure this wasn’t officially a Castlevania game but as its own thing, it was still a very well made game and hardly a rushed, half-baked cash-in.
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It’s no secret that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the survival horror genre of video games. I love the sense of adrenaline I get when I play the games, but I’m also a giant chicken. I can read scary books, or watch horror films with no problem, but when I play a survival horror game it terrifies me. I think it’s because video games are interactive. I’m controlling the character, so I put myself in his or her shoes, and thus get absolutely freaked out… or it’s because I’m a baby.
The Halloween episodes come to a close with Costume Quest, a non-retro game with tons of charm that will have you feeling warm and fuzzy about childhood Halloweens gone by.
Oljners Leonard Denholm Mann, famed hermit and wooden sword enthusiast, was recently arrested on 5 counts of child endangerment after it was discovered that trick or treaters visiting his cave (as if that wasn’t enough of a tip to not visit him) were given bags of candy containing razor blades. The incident was first realized when a young boy opened his bag to reach in for candy, and pulled his hand out to notice there were a myriad of cuts on it. The boy, when questioned by our news team, responded only saying “I wanted to get some beans for my blob.” The boy did not receive any serious injury and was released by doctors only twenty minutes after arriving. The local police, upon being told by the boy where he acquired the candy, immediately responded and arrived at Mann’s house only minutes later. They arrested Mann, and concurrently, more and more reports of dangerous candy were being reported to the main office. While being handcuffed, Mann was reported to have repeatedly shouted “They needed something sharp! It was too dangerous to go alone!”
The post was late because I was composing it over my Nokia WAP connection.
The Internet Archive, perhaps best known for it’s “Wayback Machine,” which allows people to view older version of websites via caching, has launched a initiative called the “Historical Software Collection.”
What the Eff is on This Disk is a bi weekly column that has been up and running for a short while. Just this past week I had my first ‘request’. 1MC’s own Alex Weiss (@Chronoslinger) contacted me via direct message on Twitter. The conversation went nothing like this:
Now, before I talk about old DOS game Dracula In London, I thought I should mention another vampire game which I attempted to play this week, a text game this time.
See, I’d do more text game reviews but as much as I love them, I’m mostly not very good at them. Especially since each text game has their own set of rules altogether. The Hobbit was fast-paced and pushy whereas Vampire’s Castle Adventure, the game I’m going to talk about now briefly, is limited but has time restraints so it really relies on a lot on trial and error.
I say limited because it only has like 70 words that you can say throughout all of it and with just over 180 lines of BASIC code, it’s pretty short.
The goal is “concealed”, we’re told early on, but really, from what I can gather, you just need to enter this vampire’s castle, find him before he finds you and kill him with whatever crap you’ve picked up along the way. Actually, I like how the game limits you to how many things you can carry yet you’re fine just walking around with a sledge hammer, an axe, a bucket full of water, cheese, wine and like two other things.
The title was a Bailey joke, although you probably didn’t need me to tell you that.
I figure since we are quickly approaching Halloween I would show you a game that was monster/horror related for today’s It Came From Japan. Today I am looking at Majuu-Ou, that doesn’t sound very scary, does it? Well, when you look at the translation and you see that it is called “King of the Demons,” then I think it seems a bit more creepy.
It’s hard to believe it has already been a year for me here at 1 More Castle, but it indeed has. On October 18, 2012 I let you all know which N64 games I wanted to see current gen sequels for. By the way, not a single one of them have been made. You can be real jerks sometimes, game developers. You’ve had a year, for the love of polygons. I’ve had a lot of fun over the last year. So much so, that I spread the fun to an entirely different console. I have gotten to meet some amazing people and I have gotten to interact with you fine folks that take the time to read my work, which I greatly appreciate. I was trying to come up with a way to tie a piece into a one year anniversary and I got an idea. The Nintendo 64 came out on September 29, 1996 in North America. This is a list of some games that came out right around the one year anniversary of the N64.
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Do you like monsters? How about parties? If you answered “yes” to one or both of these questions then Joe has the perfect NES game for you this Halloween.
Joe dons the tiny cape of young Dracula-kun and introduces you to this charming and challenging Castlevania spinoff for the Famicom.