Exciting news, Dukem Nukem II is being released on iOS devices in time for it’s 20th anniversary! Developed by Interceptor Entertainment (the people behind the upcoming Rise of the Triad reboot) in Conjunction with 3D Realms, the game is set for release in April for $1.99. Read the full press release after the break.
Imagine for a moment you just got the seventh Chaos Emerald in Sonic 2 or just reached world seven of Super Mario Bros and your mom says it’s time to study or time for bed. What do you do?
If you said “leave the console running until morning” congratulations, your energy-wasting ways have caused the polar ice caps to melt another three inches. (If you also left the TV on, I hope you get mauled by an angry tree or a huddle of homeless penguins)
See, we humans like progress, we like that feeling of accomplishment, especially in our games. And when that accomplishment is taken away, particularly moments after achieving it, well, we get a little upset. Arcade games had to strike a profitable balance between intentionally screwing players so as to force them to drop more quarters to keep playing and making the game fun/addicting enough so players would want to keep playing. This unfortunately meant that few players would actually see the end of a game (if there was one) because arcades couldn’t feasibly save the progress of every player. Arcade games weren’t, understandably, about making continued progress through a game or story but more about achieving high scores and being better than your friends.
Some time ago, I asked “What the EFF should I play?” with regards to my Commodore 64. Sadly, I still have not ‘played’ anything on the machine. On a related note however, last week my long awaited “Mega-Cart” arrived for the VIC 20. Let me back up a bit. Sometime in 1980-1981, the VIC 20 was released by Commodore Business Machines as a replacement for their PET computer. A computer with a real keyboard, 5K of RAM, a cartridge port, an Atari joystick compatible port, and a low sale price in 1980 of $299 (compared to the Atari 800 which was close to $1000 in 1979!) the VIC was, as Commodore founder Jack Tramiel put it “for the masses, not the classes”. It sold several million machines, preceding the Commodore 64 by two years. It was quickly overshadowed by the C64, but it does still have a dedicated fanbase.
After taking a look at the somewhat obscure movie-sequel-turned-good-and-bad-games Predator 2, let’s get back to basics: demented arcade beat ’em ups.
More specifically: Crude Buster or… rather Two Crude Dudes.
Though born in the arcade, we’ll be looking at the Sega Genesis version of the game which bears the latter title.
Much like, say, Wolfchild, Two Crude Dudes is not only great thanks to it being a genuinely good game but also thanks to just how overall nuts it is! The plot sees two muscly dudes with silly Guile-style haircuts, U.S. mercenaries, take on a terrorist organization called “Big Valley” and reclaim a post-apocalyptic New York City.
Road Rash, the series featuring motorcycle-based destruction, has long been dead. Though the games have been featured on everything from the PC, to the Sega Master System, there hasn’t been a release since the 2003 version for the Game Boy Advance. But, that may not last for long.
Welcome to Bad Guys Anonymous, a weekly column that I came up with when tapped by the folks here at 1 More Castle.
In this space, we’ll examine one bad guy at a time from games in the retro era. However, these aren’t the bad guys that made headlines and cover art as epic bosses. No, these are the bad guys that come and go before you even spend five minutes exploring any given title.
Bad Guys Anonymous is all about the first baddie you encounter in any given game. That’s the rule for this column. I think we’ll find, over time, that there’s a significant amount of deliberation that goes into which enemy players meet first. Despite their exceptional simplicity, opening baddies are more interesting than you might think.
Which brings us to the easiest first choice any writer has ever come upon: the Goomba from Super Mario Bros. on the NES.
It’s kind of a no-brainer to kick off Pinball Alley by talking about, well… Pinball. Sure, there are other pinball games for the Nintendo Entertainment System that are better, more complex, or even recreations of actual licensed pinball tables; however, Pinball from Nintendo is really where my story begins.
Any of you kids grow up with an Atari 2600 AND a Starpath Supercharger? No, it’s not the name of some spaceship in a Star Wars movie. It’s the name of a third-party add-on meant to give the 2600’s capabilities in a fairly convoluted way. First you put the cartridge/adapter with a wire sticking out of it into the cartridge slot, then plug said wire into a cassette player’s earphone jack, which is where you’d actually put the real game as they were all stored on audio cassettes. One of these very cassettes had quite possibly one of the most insane video games ever made. I suppose you should expect nothing less from a game titled “Communist Mutants from Space.”
Jason’s back from Olde Englande, and he has brought the class. Prepare for a refined, proper, and regal podcast. As it was the olde fashione, with Jim the Dolphin.
Released in 1994, Rise of the Triad was a FPS released and developed by Apogee Software. Featuring engrossing gameplay, and a penchant for being over the top, the game has gone on to be a cult classic. Lucky for us, the game is being faithfully remade by Interceptor Entertainment, and will see release later this year on Steam.
Game Director Frederik Schreiber was kind enough to answer some questions for me, so read on below to hear all about the game!
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One of my favorite types of moment at the Castle is when we can finally reveal fun stuff we have been working on behind-the-scenes for a while. The recent release of the Android app was one example, and there will be more to come (even relatively soon), but I am excited to say that today is one of those days we get to reveal some shiny new developments.
Hello, 1 More Castle! You guys kept my room just how I left it! I am back and very happy to be writing here once again. This post will not be in my usual N64 Connoisseur series because I have something a bit more personal to discuss today. That feature will return in 2 weeks. To me, it is always noteworthy when a person or a group of people defy a reputation. That noteworthy quality becomes magnified when I am personally involved in the situation. Such has been the case over these last couple of months.
While most people either gave away, lost, or had their old games thrown out on them back in the day as some sort of right of passage into adulthood, I instead saw dollar signs, and short sightedly sold 75% of my PC games in one big eBay auction back in the early 2000’s. “I’ll NEVER want to play this stuff again” said myself, circa 2003. If I had a Delorean I’d go back in time and kick myself. Alas, I have no Delorean and I have no bruise from a self induced kick. In hindsight, the $40 I received in exchange for a barbeque grill-sized box of games and manuals wasn’t worth it, because of course, like most regular readers of my column, I DO want to play some of that stuff again. I can’t even recall what I spent that $40 on. Le sigh. As I later find, everything old, given enough time, is indeed new.
You know how some movie sequels split audiences into two halves? With one half claiming the follow-up film is an underrated gem and the other just not going for it at all?
For example, I really enjoy the likes of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and Ghostbusters II but they’re not for everyone. When it comes to Predator 2, however, that’s one I just didn’t get back in the day…
Like, how did we get from Arnie “getting to the choppa,” having his pals get picked out one after the other in the jungle to a weird Danny Glover flick about voodoo practitioners and drug lords in the city?
Whatever, I’m not here to talk about the movie. Need to re-watch it anyway, if only for Gary Busey. No, I’m here to talk about the game!
Journey Escape. Yes, Journey, THAT Journey. If you don’t who Journey are, leave now. No, don’t go googling it. Just forget I ever mentioned them. Save yourself. Come back next week when I’ll talk about a game not based on a band whose music has been known to destroy people’s entire lives.
Since Jason was out committing regicide, we’ve got Ryan of Retro Rampage filling in. He may be a robot. Then again, Hunter may be a clone and Bailey, well… let’s just say we wouldn’t not not not not be not not surprised if he wasn’t not an alien.
The social media mega-destination Facebook has been derided by many as being old and boring, dreary and useless, shrinking and obsolete, far too mainstream and not as cool as Twitter and Google+. I remain active on it, though, for one simple reason: A lot of people use it, and thus it is a great forum for open discussion (go ahead, befriend me).
Case in point: I recently gave my Facebook friends a simple challenge, “Quick, name a retro video game!” After an eyebrow-raising 127 people responded, I took a look over the list and to had to smile. Here, check it out yourself, since I went ahead and typed it out, in order of appearance.
