I have long held the belief that Atari’s Haunted House for the 2600 is a keystone in the foundation of adventure and horror video games. So what better day to talk about it than on Halloween? Continue reading “Haunted House: the Origin of Survival Horror!”
The 16-bit Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis) was released in Japan 30 years ago today, on October 29, 1988. Happy birthday!
Much like when I wrote a little about the PC Engine at 30 or the Famicom at 35, I’m not here to give a history of the Mega Drive, which you can find anywhere, but I will bore you with some of my favorite things about the console.
Now normally I don’t post news items here on the blog, but today I am making an exception. The newly-reformed Intellivision company, headed up by video game music veteran Tommy Tallarico, has just announced the upcoming release of a new video game console: the Amico! Continue reading “Intellivision announces Amico!”
So here it is! I’ve been excited about this since its announcement, and on October 15, 2018, the Neo Geo Mini was released in the US. Seriously, as soon as SNK showed their little 40th anniversary surprise, I declared, in no uncertain terms, “I’m buying that.”
Also, the hilarious irony of a console whose advertising slogan was “Bigger – Badder – Better” and bragged about the “Meg” size of their cartridges being reduced to a tiny unit the size of a Coleco tabletop game is not lost on me.
Today is the second anniversary of Retro Game SuperHyper! Happy birthday! Continue reading “2 Years!”
Last month’s announcement of the 17th catalog release from British video game soundtrack vinyl specialists Data Discs was an exciting surprise: Policenauts, Konami’s 1994 graphic adventure game, directed by Hideo Kojima. Available on multiple formats, beginning with the PC-9821 computer, then ported to the 3DO, Sony PlayStation, and Sega Saturn consoles, this spiritual follow-up to Kojima’s classic, Snatcher, never actually got an official release anywhere outside of Japan. Despite this, Policenauts has still managed to gain legendary status among import game enthusiasts and Kojima fans alike.
I’ve read a lot of books on video game history, and I’ve heard a lot of the same stories told several times. Therefore, rare is the story I haven’t heard yet; and here we have a book — the first of three massive volumes, no less — that is absolutely packed cover-to-cover with things I didn’t know, things I didn’t know that I didn’t know, and things I didn’t even know that I wanted to know, but it turns out I’m really glad I know them now.
At the risk of featuring too many PS4 games in recent posts (what can I say, they all have a retro connection or I wouldn’t be talking about them), Sega’s Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (aka Hokuto no Gotoku) was released in the US this week, to the gleeful delight of combined Fist of the North Star and Yakuza fans everywhere. How wide or slim the overlap of that particular Venn diagram is, I don’t really know. But I’m wedged in there myself, and when this game was first announced, my head almost exploded like one of Kenshiro’s unfortunate opponents.
FotNSLP/HnG (it’s a long title either way, I don’t even know how to abbreviate it for this post) is just the latest in a really long line of video games based on the classic manga/anime property, Hokuto no Ken (lit. “Fist of the North Star”), dating all the way back to the ’80s when the manga was current and the show was actually airing on Japanese TV. Some of the games are good; many are not. And out of the dozens of HnK games released, only a handful were released outside of Japan. Let’s take a look at some of the good ones, shall we? (Perhaps I’ll do another post about all the not-so-good FotNS games someday, and call it “You’re Already Disappointed” or something.) (Don’t steal that, I just came up with it.) Continue reading “You’re Already Having Fun”
Retro Game SuperHyper 