Kirby’s Dream Land 2 Retro Review: Gray Puffballs and Furry Friends

For those of you too young to remember Nintendo once launched some of their big name franchises on their handhelds, the first of which was their lovable powderpuff Kirby. His first Game Boy game “Kirby’s Dream Land” hit stores in August of 1992, whereas he didn’t make his console debut on the NES until later that year. The franchise continued to grow in popularity with the re-release of “Kirby’s Adventure” for the Game Boy as “Nightmare in Dream Land,” as well as a couple of spin-off titles like “Dream Course” and “Avalanche” for the SNES, and “Pinball Land” for the Game Boy, but he didn’t see a proper sequel until 1994’s “Dream Land 2.” It came out right around the start of the SNES era, so the Game Boy fans still had something to play before the advent of the Game Boy Color, and it was released the year as the Super Game Boy allowing it to take advantage of some of that peripheral’s special features. [Continue Reading]

Klonoa Review: Is He A Cat Or A Rabbit?

Video game remakes have been occurring more and more this console generation than ever before. With the advent of Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, it’s become extremely easy, and less risky for publishers to reach into their back catalogs and push out a rehashed “classic” from the mid 1980s. Some are better than others, but all of them prey on the sense of nostalgia that is virtually omnipresent in gamers over the age of 22. And that works because a lot of the games that have been re-released, your “Pac-Man”s and your “Galaga”s, are games that people are lifelong fans of, but does that same theory work when the game in question isn’t as well known as “Dig Dug”? Well, Namco Bandai (coincidentally the publisher of all of the aforementioned games) has set out to answer that question with the re-release of the lesser known PS1 game, “Klonoa.” [Continue Reading]

Noitu Love Review: Finally, A Game That Doesn’t Make Sense Again!

Back in the glory days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the early start of the Super Nintendo, game developers didn’t care how crazy a platformer’s plot was; all you needed was a character shooting, fighting or jumping on his or her enemies on their way to a goal. That was the end of all the muss and fuss, and the games would become popular because they kept people interested. The only plot you needed was in the instruction manual, or the opening title sequence, and there were usually enough holes and crazy developments in a single plot that you’d need a pincushion to stick a needle in them all. After all, who in their right mind would send a single man with a robotic, swinging hand to defeat the Nazis (”Bionic Commando”), or have a blue-collar worker from Brooklyn enter a pipe bigger than most taxis and go to a world with mushrooms that make you grow to save a princess that has been captured by a large, spiked turtle. Those games are still great, and, nowadays, developers only do so much to keep the insanity in a “good” game. [Continue Reading]

Bonesaw Review: Kirby Meets Hockey Fights

When you think “hockey,” do you think of a “Kirby”-style platformer with NES-style graphics? That’s what I thought, and clearly Kyle Pulver didn’t approve of that fact. Based on a college-hockey game, and their prime method of cheering – referring to a bonesaw cutting of a man’s arm -”Bonesaw” combines fighting and platformer exploration all into one game. You play a young Golden Knight, a hockey player, off to rescue your teammates who have been placed in the penalty box by the all-powerful referee. [Continue Reading]

Spelunky Review: Independent Gaming By Derek Yu

In my recent articles, I have mentioned several games known as “Roguelikes,” which are generally fully-designed, highly-detailed role-playing games with a dungeon-crawling aspect. Using numerals and letters in a computer system database, the player is the at (@) symbol who fights monsters and hordes treasure all in the vain hope that you will reach the end? Why I say “vain”, you may ask? Because Roguelikes are HARD. These games, not for the faint-at-heart, tend to set you up against monsters and monster hordes that whittle you and your resources down, in addition to insidious traps which degrade your equipment, lower you to different floors, and teleport you. You have to learn from each death, plan out each of your next moves carefully, and pray that the random factors of each game don’t screw you over.

This leads most people I’ve talked to about “Spelunky,” a independent platformer by designer Darek Yu, to ask a very simple and reasonable question; why am I talking about roguelikes, a completely different genre of games entirely, when referring to a platformer? [Continue Reading]

Iji Review: An Indie Game by Daniel Remar

A couple times within the scope of the year or so in just about any given media, a storyline takes place with a post-apocalyptic tone which preserves humanity as much as possible through a combined struggle. “Iji,” made by Daniel Remar, is anything but, as the role of saving an insignificant earth from a deadly race relies on luck, and a slowly-changing young woman thrown into very deadly situation. “Iji” starts as the game’s namesake enjoys a lovely walk through her father’s workplace at a research facility with her sister… when all hell breaks loose with orbital strikes. When she comes to, her brother and only human contact, Dan, serves as a handler and lack of moral compass as the story slowly unfolds; aliens known as the Tasen brought about the Armageddon, and Iji’s body was heavily damaged. Given cybernetic components from leftover technology from a race long past, Iji takes her nanogun and takes it to the invaders…. or not. [Continue Reading]

Wario Shaking it Up on Wii

2d gaming is back and on the Wii courtesy of Nintendo! In Wario’s latest adventure Wario Land: Shake it!, our hero is back and up to his old treasure hunting/stealing self. In this adventure players will use the Wii remote and hold it sideways classic controller style. And by shaking the controller, Wario will perform some on screen actions such as shaking items or tilting left and right to maintain balance.

Whats also cool about this Wario title is the arts style that developers/creators chose for the game; which you can see is a more animated/anime style. The previous Wario titles were all fun, and held their own unique style of play compared to the traditional Mario games. This title will be hitting Japan this fall. The US version is still TBA. Check the Japanese intro and gameplay footage below.

Unit out…