Bomberman Retro Review: Explosives Were Spherical Once

Man, has “Bomberman” taken a pretty big turn in the years since its original Japanese release way back in 1983. From furry animals to cutsey 3D, then crappy, gritty 3D, and then back to its roots; “Bomberman” has been lauded by many as the beginning of some of the most important mechanics in gaming. One of which was the inclusion of the Super Nintendo’s multi-controller feature, which allowed four players to play at once for a truly-epic multiplayer experience at the time. It was born in an age of simplicity, where, to win, all you had to do was turn the other players into blasted masses with bombs. Since games had yet to see the invention of sticky bombs, all us “old fogies” remember the good-old days when we used the Kick Power, a 5 Column Bomb, and a Detonator to take out our opponents. Ah, those were some good times. [Continue Reading]

The Adventures of Lolo Retro Review: The Blue Puffball On The NES

Back before HAL Laboratory brought us pink puffballs and giant king penguins with hammers, there was a tiny blue ball of puzzle goodness called Lolo. He once quested through fifty levels of puzzles on the NES back in 1989 in “The Adventures of Lolo,” a compilation of sorts that was never released in Japan, as most of its levels were duplicated from the “Eggerland” series. [Continue Reading]

Canabalt Review: Atom Atomic Presents RUN! AND JUMP TO FREEDOM

It has been said that the simplest games are generally the most fun. That rings true for myself, my editor, and just about everyone else I’ve introduced to “Canabalt“; a simple, but extremely well-designed game, where you’re some suit in a big corporate office running from robots shooting bombs at the city. So, basically, it’s just like what you did earlier today. [Continue Reading]

Indie Brawl Well On The Way – Three Characters Ready To Fight

When you leave a variety of game developers alone with talented artists, great things can happen like “Chrono Trigger,” “Resident Evil,” and countless other titles can become the fruits of their labor. The “Super Smash Bros.” series is one of those titles, and since its release the biggest minds in the independent gaming community have come together to release their own collaborative fighting game, “Indie Brawl.” After a lot of strain to secure rights from established producers of acclaimed independent games (some that are even lined up for an eventual Wii release), a bare-bones framework, with three characters now fully made. The Golden Knight from “Bonesaw,” the main marine-equse character from the platformer “Aquaira,” and a worm from the realtime strategy hit heavily inspired by “Worms,” Liero. [Continue Reading]

NBA Jam Retro Review: From The Hoopsters That Brought You Mortal Kombat

It could have been one of the most interesting ad campaigns in the history of video games; NBA greats like Larry Johnson, Patrick Ewing, or Dee Brown simply discussing just how fun of “NBA Jam” is. Use your imagination… I’ll give you a minute. The pinnacle of arcade basketball games was released by Midway and published by Acclaim in 1993 for most of the major consoles and handhelds at the time, with ports for both sides of the Nintendo/Sega console war. The game was so popular in arcades that it spawned a handful of “sequels,” which were basically just updates to the system, and expanded on the “NBA Jam” brand with “Tournament Edition” and “NBA Jam Extreme” until they removed all the fun, and called the game “NBA Primetime on NBC.” Through it all, “NBA Jam” carried a little extra clout due to the fact that the arcade version of basketball was more interesting then normal basketball. [Continue Reading]

Bookworm Adventures: Volume 2 Review: Scrabble To Your Doom!

When it comes to “gaming,” people have many choices. That word evokes a lot of different ideas in people’s heads, and, while most people reading this may immediatly jump to “video gaming,” there are entire populations that are much more likely to think of board games. Search on YouTube for “Crossfire” if you don’t believe me; it’s well-regarded as the most awesomely-hyped board game to ever exist. Anyone out there remember Mouse Trap or Life? Man, I feel really old when I recall how many deadly-deals I made for people’s souls and their hard-earned cash due to capitalism squared in Monopoly. However, our focus today belongs to the wordsmith’s game, Scrabble.

The aft-returning adage, “easy to learn, hard to master” was this game’s selling point in many respects; spell a word with your given letters, and get points. Fast forward to today, and the game has become culturally complicated and gorged upon a fanbase of Scrabble Masters and Scrabble Dictionaries made for the game, and there’s even online and real-life Scrabble tournaments. And since most of the video game versions either weren’t particularly good, or fell into obscurity due to Hasbro typically releasing titles en-masse, those games aren’t really worth most people’s time. PopCap, however, decided to meld the same basic concept with a slimy, yet knowledgeable, bookworm named Lex in “Bookworm Adventure.” Clearly not to be outdone by “Puzzle Quest,” the player uses letters as weapons, traveling through three books of various genres and archetypes. The recently released sequel, “Bookworm Adventures 2″ builds on the concept of the original. [Continue Reading]

Nicalis Makes Critical Strides For Independent Games On Wiiware

Nintendo’s Wii is currently standing at the top of the console-market, just two years since becoming the fastest-selling console from 2007-2009, and now reaching fifty million homes worldwide according to Nintendo’s President Satoru Iwata (and that was back in March). With all those consoles in homes across the globe, there is one corner of the gaming world that is seeing a surprising boom, independent games. Nintendo’s WiiWare seems to know how to branch out when it really wants to, and over the last year various independent games have blasted their way onto the home console DLC scene courtesy of Nintendo’s little white wonder. [Continue Reading]

Shadowgate Retro Review: Welcome to Your (Many Forms Of) Doom!

When ICOM Simulations Inc. was still doing point-and-click adventures, back in the days before they were bought out by Infinite Ventures, their eariler projects included classics like “Uninvited” and “Deja Vu” for early personal computers and the Nintendo Entertainment System. The games were detailed enough to work with the restricted graphical capabilities of the NES, and still manage to provide a well-developed horror or noir story. After those releases, ICOM went on to develop another game, “Shadowgate,” using the same system of item collection coupled with multiple screens of text and images to tell a suspenseful and immersive tale, where you just happened to be killed – almost constantly. “Shadowgate” was the third game to use the “MacAdventure” system as mentioned above, just before the sequel to “Deja Vu” finished off the series when it was released in 1989. [Continue Reading]

Roogoo: Twisted Towers Review: Peg-In-Hole Gets Complicated

Southpeak Games may be a fairly new player in the video game market, but they aren’t holding back in terms of the uniqueness and quality of their releases. The company has received various levels of acclaim courtesy of their console releases across every genre, including “Two Worlds” and “X-Blades.” Southpeak has also made a name for themselves on the philanthropic side of gaming as well, having given over $12.9 million to the development of independent gaming, and the presentation of it to the mainstream markets. One of those independent companies, Spidermonk Enterainment, received the 2009 Best Puzzler award at this year’s E3, courtesy of 411mania.com, for their recently released Wii title, “Roogoo: Twisted Towers.” [Continue Reading]

A Closer Look At 4X Games: The “X” Is For Extreme Civilizations

I seriously doubt most people know what 4X games are, at least when they are referred to by that name. They’re generally known as “civilization building” games, a sub-genre of strategy games where the player builds a society and develops it from the ground up, dealing with other civilizations through trade, political talks, or abstract violence. Games in this genre started out with Sid Meier’s “Civilization” back in 1991, but the name of the genre was coined by game writer Alan Emrich. The “4X”s, a pun of the well-known porn term XXX, refered to the games’ four precepts which don’t start with the X at all; explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. [Continue Reading]

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