Virtual View

Mario’s Tennis Review

When I got my Virtual Boy for Xmas, I could finally get down to creating some reviews relating to the console, the first of which will be a review of the VB’s pack-in title, Mario’s Tennis. When the red machine came in the mail, one of the games it came with was Mario’s Tennis which would become the first entry in the Mario Tennis series which still continues today with Mario Tennis Open on the 3DS, which came out back in May of 2012.

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Atari Poop

Atari Poop – Dig Dug

When released for the arcades in 1982, the developers of Dig Dug had to have several key changes made to their final product just to have it released at all. As a result, they created a classic. Unfortunately, when it was ported to the 2600 a year later, gamers finally got to play the now classic game the way the developers had always intended.

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RetroHate

M.C. Kids: Over 1 Billion Pwned

McDonald’s. The biggest and most influential fast food chain in the world. They even have a creepy clown for a mascot. Seems like the perfect franchise for a video game, right? And not some Burger Time or Tapper clone, no, what this  fast food franchise needs is a platformer. A really bad platformer. With deadly forest critters and piranha.

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Age of Empires 2: HD Review

Writing a review on an HD remake of a game is a tricky thing. Do I review the game itself, or do I judge the merits of it’s HD port from a technical level? In a way, I hope I can do a bit of both.

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The Fair Shake

SimCity Classic

As noted in previous Fair Shakes, I’m a fan of simulation games like Civilization. I like being able to modify a setting and see how things change over time. With the latest debacle and blunder from EA regarding the newest iteration in the Simcity series, I thought I’d go back to the beginning, where Simcity started. Before online play, constant DRM, and that guy from Workaholics doing commercials pretending he’s a mayor. Simcity. Or, as it’s been retconned, Simcity Classic. Released initially in 1989,  Simcity came about as an afterthought from programmer Will Wright, who was developing maps for the game Raid on Bungeling Bay. Wright had more fun drawing maps than playing the game, so he went about trying to do something them. Simcity was created for the Commodore 64, but was released (4 years later) eventually for just about every system at the time. Ports range from the Japanese FM Towns, to the SNES, with even current releases under iOS and Wii.

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The Backlog

Episode Eight – Tinhead (Sega Genesis)

I keep a document on my phone that lists every game I have an interest in talking about on the show, and it grows by the day as I learn about new games and think “hey that looks neat!” Tinhead for the Sega Genesis was on my list and I found a copy for sale at PAX East, and after spending time with it I can confirm that it is indeed quite awesome. It gets crazy difficult in the later levels, but it’s still a really fun game starring a super charming robotic hero.

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The Retro Critic

Earthworm Jim 2

After looking back at the first Earthworm Jim game on the Sega Genesis for Review A Great Game Day, I thought that I might as well check out the sequel, a game I actually always found superior to the original.

Earthworm Jim 2, also on the Genesis, takes what made the first game great and just… makes it better.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the first game but I was never a huge fan of that bubble-sub water level and those mini Psy-Crow space races did get somewhat repetitive after a while. This time around, the game feels much more consistent and I recall back in the day playing it and completing it way more often than the first game just because it had a better overall flow to it. Not that it’s that much easier than the first game, it’s still quite challenging in places but you can get through the game far more smoothly than the original Earthworm Jim.

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