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Insert Currency: Assassin’s Creed – A Persian History

Ubisoft, and other modern gaming behemoths, no longer conjure new concepts from the ether. Ideas don’t come into this world screaming, wailing, and covered in placenta. Instead, like so many Pokemon, they evolve. Your Prince of Persia is now an Assassin’s Creed! Each new franchise goes through a multi-year period of development and refinement, as did Assassin’s Creed and its gargantuan 15 iteration span of sequels and novels, but the genesis of the core game dates as far back as 1989’s Prince of Persia and 1987’s Metal Gear.

The Review A Bad Game Day Mega Feature

If you had not heard, there is a new gaming holiday called Review A Bad Game Day, August 8th, and yesterday was the inaugural occurrence. The event has its own official ReviewABadGameDay.com website and everything.

In the spirit of trashing more bad games, a few of us at 1MC thought we would combine a handful of original, exclusive shorter reviews into one “mega post” for the purpose of ending this year’s festivities with a bang. Enjoy the carnage.

The Fair Shake

Top Gun: NES

Greetings readers! Carl is strapping his helmet on. He’s ready to be your wingman, anytime. Do you feel the need… for speed? If these mildly cheesy lines ring a bell, they should, as they are from that great action film of the 80’s, Top Gun. In memory of the now retired F14 Tomcat, I present Top Gun.

Review a Bad Game Day – Double Dare (NES)

Hello! My name is Chris, also known as nesdude, also known as that guy who does Retro Lookback. I decided to do a little text review of a bad game.

I love game shows. From the classics such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy to the more obscure titles (anyone else remember Russian Roulette?), I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game show I haven’t enjoyed. I don’t love game show video games. They’re usually simply unpleasant to play, boring, and lack all of the excitement of the real show. That’s the problem with Double Dare.

REVIEW A BAD GAME DAY – ALF

Alf was great.

Oh sure, looking back he looks pretty gross and the awkward tension on the set of the show is palpable throughout every episode, and maybe he wasn’t exactly funny “per se” but we still loved the Melmacian back in the day so a game should bring back some happy memories.

Right?

Oh now I remember, that Sega Master System game RUINED MY LIFE!

Might Donkey Kong be the most historically important game ever?

I think about this from time to time, and with this Saturday being the birthday of the big ape I am thinking about it more.

Donkey Kong is probably the most historically important game in history.

According to government filings, August 11, 1981 was the first date that the original Donkey Kong test machine appeared. The location was a sports bar called The Spot Tavern in the Seattle area.

DK was created specifically to be a hit game that unsold Radar Scope cabinets could be turned into. Nintendo of America was falling into bankruptcy thanks to the failure of Radar Scope in the states. When Kong became a huge hit, Nintendo’s U.S. venture was saved from the brink. Read More

Top 10 Ways Having a Child Changed My Relationship with Video Games

Today is my son’s second birthday (that’s him with me in the picture above). He’s an awesome little guy and I love him to bits. His coming has changed a lot in my life; some changes were expected and others unexpected. One of these unexpected ways has been his impact on my relationship with video games. The first 9 entries on the list are not in any particular order, but they all build towards #1 in a way that makes it the most important.

So, if you have had a young kid or still have one, you might be able to relate to what you are about to read. If you are thinking about having kids, read this as a cautionary tale. If you ARE a young kid, what the hell are you doing here reading this? Seriously, I’m gonna swear here so you shouldn’t be reading this. For fuck’s sake, where are your parents? Playing video games?

Retro Lookback

Mole Mania

Not every one of Shigeru Miyamoto’s classic titles turned out to be hits. This week on Retro Lookback, Chris takes a look at Mole Mania, Miyamoto’s quirky but largely ignored Game Boy puzzle game.

Retrocity

Get ready for a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis retrospective with purpose. Alan Williamson of Split-Screen.net brings us the best and worst of Sega’s fourth generation console. We’ve embedded the first two episodes past the break.

Saturnology

Decathlete

The London 2012 Olympics are in full swing, and rather than navigate the shark-infested waters of olympic trademark law, we bring you a review of Decathlete, the Sega Saturn pseudo-athletic button masher!

Re-Release Review

Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 / Mole Mania

The final week of the 8-bit summer is upon us friends! This week we see the release of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, and a little known game known as Mole Mania. The one you should download will shock you. Find out if these are worth your cash after the break.

PC Master

Your first (budget) gaming PC

So you’re interested in building a gaming PC, eh? Over the next few weeks, we’ll be delving into the big wide world of PC gaming with you, and will be detailing exactly what you need to start. We’ll cover hardware choices, how to get those retro PC games up and running, how to connect it to your TV, etc.

Before we start considering any of the gaming aspects of the machine, let’s discuss the hardware you’ll need. Trying to keep it within a reasonable budget, we’ll set a price of around $400 (comparable to consoles) for your first machine. Read on as we go through a list of hardware choices that are right for your budget PC gaming needs.
Read More

Interview: The Game Fanatics

There are a lot of websites out there that have something to do with video games.

As someone involved with one or two modest sites of my own, I have the pleasure of interacting with those who run others, and very much enjoy communicating over social media such as Twitter. One of the simply coolest people I have run into has been @FanaticalG, who runs the show over at TheGameFanatics.com.

Although The Game Fanatics is a very modern site that covers the most cutting-edge titles in gaming, peripherals, and tech, there is also a notable fondness given towards retro gaming and their influence. I suspect most modern gamers have fond memories of old games, but always appreciate it when webmasters of these sites are willing to talk about older titles.

The Fair Shake

Action Fighter: SMS

Greetings Readers! Carl beckons you to the sidecar of his bike. Want to ride? This week we’ll be taking secret missions and exploring that game where you play a spy in control of a car with some cool weapons. No, not Spy Hunter.. the other one. Ever heard of “Action Fighter”?

The Retro Critic

THE ADVENTURES OF YOGI BEAR

With the release of Ted in the UK this week, I promptly went in search of bear-related retro games (as you do). The thought of playing Wally Bear & The NO! Gang On the NES again proving to be too much of a hassle, I settled on Hanna-Barbera’s golden bear himself: Yogi.

Ah good old Yogi.

Never a fan of the show myself, I nevertheless occasionally watched it back in the day. It was mindless, plotless and repetitive but hey, it was a cartoon and it was on TV. I was a kid, what was I meant to do? NOT watch it? Focus on homework?

Homework lol Read More

The joy of frustration is hard to find

Let’s just toss this right out there on the table. I’m hooked on Spelunky on XBLA. Ever since the game came out several weeks ago my gaming break time has been spent trying to push through this damn hard game.

It’s always been hard for me to find games that I could both be challenged by and enjoy at the same time. More often than not, the games I truly enjoy don’t exactly keep me up nights, and the games that challenge me are often not played again once I’m done with them.

Spelunky manages to do both. I’m near the end but can’t quite get there yet, but have no desire to move on right now. I’m going to do this, damn it. I’m going to complete this game.

It got me to thinking about the last time a game managed to do this to me. Best answer I could give came back in 1990 when I picked up the Konami ass-kicker The Adventures of Bayou Billy.
Read More

Character RETROspect

Billy “Big Bang” Blitz

Hey guys, do you remember Vic Tokai, a video game developer from the late 1980’s through most of the 1990’s? Well, you might remember them for their more notable NES releases: the two Golgo 13 games and Amagon, but their best game (in my opinion) was Clash at Demonhead.

This week in Character RETROspect, we will be looking at the main protagonist from Clash at Demonhead, Billy “Big Bang” Blitz, the most manly of men to ever grace the NES. Grab your Aqua Lung because we’re going deep into some NES history!

Atari Poop

Atari Poop – Warlords

The first game to have been based on Niccolò Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, Warlords (originally even titled “Princes”, but later changed to “Condottieri” because it sounded too wimpy, and then changed again because it sounded to Italian) is an Atari 2600 classic.

Saturnology

Daytona USA

Welcome to Saturnology! David Lewis will be looking at the games, peripherals, and just plain weird stuff about the under-appreciated Sega Saturn. This week’s video: Daytona USA!

PC Master

DOSBox

A challenge many PC gamers face with retro gaming, is how to get their games running properly on modern systems. Sure, one may have the executable for Commander Keen backed up on their hard drive, but it was hardly designed with Windows 7 in mind. And, unlike some console gamers, PC gamers don’t really keep old hardware around. PC hardware is on a constant march forward, where one trades in the old for the latest and greatest. So what is a modern PC gamer to do when they are a retro gamer at heart?

The answer to these problems is the ever versatile DOSBox. What’s DOSBox you ask? Read on, and I’ll show you how to get your classic games up and running again like it’s 1991.

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