The Fair Shake
Spacewar: DOS
Greetings Readers! Carl is trapped in 80’s PC land again. This time, he’s engaged in an endless battle between two space ships. Actually, it’s more like a Spacewar. Ever heard of it? Read on.
Character RETROspect
Scissorman
The tension of knowing that a psychopath is desperately trying to kill you around every possible corner in the mansion known as “Clock Tower” is something I will never forget for the rest of my life.
His name: Bobby, but he is more commonly referred to as Scissorman.
His profession: Scaring/stabbing the crap out of you.
Ragequitters don’t know how good they have it
It’s a fact of life for anyone who plays modern games online… people are going to get their shorts bunched up if you do better than them and rage quit. It’s just how it goes.
Sometimes it’s funny… sometimes it’s annoying… but it is always going to happen.
I can’t stand it, honestly. If I’m getting my ass kicked on Madden, I want to keep playing against this guy so I can learn what he’s doing right and I’m doing wrong. Nobody is going to improve by quitting every time the going gets rough.
Atari Poop
Atari Poop – Yar’s Revenge
Yar’s Revenge is a classic video game that lets you play as a pirate. It was fun and had a few elements that hadn’t really been seen in video games yet, like playing the role of a pirate.
Those of you unfamiliar with the game might be wondering: If this game is about pirates, why does it have a giant-ass fly shooting grapefruits out of its mouth? Those of you who are familiar with the game are probably asking the same question. Meanwhile, I’m asking myself a different question: Why do they call them grapefruits? That’s a stupid name for the fruit. It looks nothing like a grape. Grapes are fruit, so they should be called grapefruits. Like all sorts of grapes are, you know, fruits from the grape family? Anyway, the French have a much better, totally not ridiculous word for them: Pamplemousse.
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1 More Podcastle
003 – Now In Stereo!
Hunter’s back this week, and so are two concurrent channels of audio! This episode has it all: controversial opinions, vaguely football-esque games, and another trip to the weird part of the internet for Shaq-Fu.
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Raptor: Call of the Shadows. A vertical, raster-based shooter, the game arrived in a decade that saw the “shoot-em-up” genre begin to wane in popularity.
So how was Cyngus Studio’s Raptor? How has it aged since it’s initial release in 1994? Read on, for the answers lie below!
Map Quest
Map Quest: Pokémon Red and Blue
Pallet Town. Cinnabar Island. When you say these places out loud, memories come rushing back. Confronting your rival for the first time — having second thoughts on your choice for your first Pokémon — losing miserably to Blaine.
All of these events have meaning because of the wonderful world Game Freak created in 1996. Pokémon‘s Kanto region. Read More
The Fair Shake
Janitor Joe
Greetings Readers! Carl is helping poor Janitor Joe, a human trapped in a space station overrun by some evil robots. Unfortunately, he has no weapons, but he can jump pretty high, probably since he’s in space and all. He needs keys to get out of all five levels of the space station. Help him escape!
The Retro Critic
BARBIE
Yes. Barbie.
This is what happens when you poke around the depths of the NES catalogue looking for something nice and lame to play/review.
Now I’m no Barbie connoisseur but I’ve played quite a few retro games, as you know, so I should be able to play that one and judge it on its merits as a game at least without knocking the beloved doll and breaking some of 1MoreCastle’s Barbie fanatics‘ little hearts. [ Editor’s Note: My heart may be little, but it is also rock hard and ice cold. Bring it on, silly man. — E. ]
Here we go.
Graphics? We don’t need no stinking graphics!
Modern gamers and gaming pundits that either rave or rant about the graphics and cutscenes in the latest adventure games always make me grin just a little bit.
Once upon a time, we didn’t HAVE graphics in our long adventure games. Just words.
Yes. Words. Text on a screen… usually in a color that was hard on the eyes.
Frankly, while I am among those amazed at the details that exist in modern-day gaming graphics, I somewhat miss the old text adventures. They are perhaps the one gaming medium that doesn’t still exist in the modern day, at least in the mainstream.
1 More Podcastle
002 – Attack of the Canadians!
Well, it didn’t take long for things to go completely off the rails. Our Technical Editor, Andrew, is subbing in for Eric Hunter this week, we find ourselves on several tangents, and we may have painted hate mail targets on ourselves. You be the judge!
Atari Poop
Atari Poop – A-Team
The usual author of Atari Poop, Atsinganoi, is off this week for reasons I cannot reveal. I, Eric Bailey, am replacing him again, following my “success” with my prior effort at doing so, with Atari Poop – Off The Wall.
Before we go any further, I want to clear something up right away: Yes, that A-Team.
Grand Theft Auto 2
Grand Theft Auto 2. You know, the games were good before Grand Theft Auto III pushed the series to pop culture status. It was a simpler time, where one committed crimes from an overhead view, before lawyers and 3D graphics took hold of the series.
So…how was the game? Did it provide the same amount of fun as the games that followed after it? Read on, as the answers lie below.
Animal Abuse in NES Games, Part 2
In the original article, we looked at three 8-bit video games on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console that contained notable scenes of animal abuse: RoboCop, Metal Gear, and Maniac Mansion. While those three samples each came with a screenshot and some exposition, there were even a few honorable mentions: The Adventures of Bayou Billy, Jurassic Park, and Duck Hunt.
However, further thinking and research has uncovered the potentially disturbing evidence that the aforementioned cartridges were far from an exhaustive coverage of animal abuse in the NES library. In fact, below are four further noteworthy examples.
The Fair Shake
Flag Capture
Greetings readers! In honor of “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” Carl is on the beach searching for your flag. Why? He wants to find it quickly, so he can sound his digital horn in triumph. Will you find his flag first? He thinks he can take you in a game of free-for-all as well as in a turn-by-turn match. Join him in a quick game of Flag Capture on the Atari 2600.
The Retro Critic
JUDGE DREDD
So there’s a new Judge Dredd movie out and it’s…
Decent!
As if that wasn’t weird enough, there also exists a decent Judge Dredd game on the Sega Genesis and it’s based on a movie that, at best…
1 More Podcastle
Episode 1 – Lawnmowers!
Welcome to the inaugural episode of 1 More Podcastle! Eric Bailey, Eric Hunter, and Jason Lamb chat about what they’ve been playing, and then argue about who brought the best game to the podcast.
It’s Supercade Time! Fun Fun Fun!
Shockingly, it has now been 29 years since CBS introduced Saturday Supercade, a multiple-title Saturday morning cartoon that featured many of the top video game properties of the day.
The series only lasted for two seasons, vanishing into thin air when the Great Video Game Crash of the mid-1980s made anything related to gaming go up in smoke for a couple of years. Due to licensing and rights issues between the different companies involved in the series, it may never see the light of day again in any sort of complete form.
Funniest thing about the series are the liberties that were taken on the story for each game title. Plots in video games were not a common thing back in the those days, so the people behind Saturday Supercade made their own.
Saturnology
Gale Racer
Some games have great arcade ports. Gale Racer is not one of those games.
Watch David dissect this frustrating racer, or just be mesmerized for 6 minutes by the little Sonic swinging from the ceiling of the car.
Character RETROspect
Cecil Harvey: Part Three
Last week we took a look at the “second” part of Cecil’s story in Final Fantasy IV, and this — the FINAL week — we will be wrapping it all up. Maybe one day I will write about Cecil and the continuation of Final Fantasy IV’s story with the Interlude and The After Years campaigns, but I think three weeks in a row is probably overkill as it is…
Anyways, let’s wrap this sucker up!