Quite a while back, I wrote a nostalgia piece about the old Coleco tabletop arcade games. While those vintage toys are still cool, there are scads of impressive new mini arcade machines out now, with more on the horizon. While I’ve largely passed them by until now, some recent announcements have rendered some of these minis impossible for me to ignore.
Continue reading “Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny Arcade Games, Part 2”
Here’s a piece that I’ve been really excited about: The Dragon’s Lair Trilogy collector’s edition from Limited Run Games for PS4! You all know I’m a sucker for Dragon’s Lair, so I had to pull the trigger on this release, and it sure hit me right in the laserdisc nostalgias. Check out the video to see what’s inside! Continue reading “Dragon’s Lair Trilogy Collector’s Edition Unboxing”
That’s right, you heard right — after a long delay, the second issue of the Retro Game SuperHyper fanzine is finally done, in the can, put to bed, uploaded, out and available to buy RIGHT NOW! Continue reading “Retro Game SuperHyper ‘Zine Issue #2 is HERE!”
After hearing about it for months, I finally started watching High Score Girl. And I finished it, too — it’s an easy series to binge, with only 12 episodes at 20+ minutes each. What a fun show! Continue reading “High Score Girl”
For a couple months now, I’ve seen cans of Red Bull with Pac-Man on them. Not being a Red Bull drinker, I thought it was interesting, but didn’t pay it any mind, really. But today my curiosity finally got the best of me, and I really got to wondering: what is going on here, and more importantly, why? Continue reading “Pac-Man gets Bullish”
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”
When I set off on my day-long arcade adventure to visit three arcades in the Chicago and Milwaukee vicinities, I was just expecting a fun day off filled with video games and food, and I figured I could maybe get a blog article out of each place I visited. However, on my way home from the last arcade, late at night, drained of energy and running purely on coffee, I came to realize that although the posts I would write about those three arcades were individual entities, there was also a fourth post asking to be written, relating all three places to each other.
See, what I realized after visiting Galloping Ghost, Level 257, and The Garcade is that there are many ways to approach arcade gaming in 2018, and while all three venues share the common bond of being public video game centers, they each provide a totally different experience. Continue reading “Arcade Road Trip Roundup”
Located in Menomonee (that’s pronounced men-AH-muh-nee) Falls, Wisconsin, which is a suburb of Milwaukee, The Garcade is a relatively new joint opened in July of 2017 by local arcade collector Gar Nelson (hence the name). And it’s everything you could want in a classic arcade. Continue reading “Arcade Pilgrimage: The Garcade, Menomonee Falls, WI”
UPDATE: Since I last visited, Level 257 has changed its name to Pac-Man Entertainment.
Located in Schaumburg, Illinois, Level 257 is a Pac-Man-themed concept restaurant/arcade/entertainment venue owned and operated by Namco. I’d been wanting to check it out ever since it opened years ago (I can’t remember or find an exact date, but I recall hearing about it opening), but I didn’t want to drive 3 hours to the Chicago area just for that; I was hoping to tack it onto a trip for some other reason. Well, my visit to Galloping Ghost gave me the perfect opportunity.
As you classic gaming nerds have probably already guessed, Level 257’s name is inspired by Pac-Man’s “kill screen” that occurs at the 256th level. Apparently, after level 256, there’s food and booze and bowling and videogames, because that’s what you’ll find at Level 257. Continue reading “Level 257: Om-Nom-Namco”
There are a few arcades in the United States that are probably on all video game enthusiasts’ lists of places to visit before they die: Funspot/The American Classic Arcade Museum in Laconia, New Hampshire; Ground Kontrol in Portland, Oregon; and Galloping Ghost in Brookfield, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. I have been to all of them — a couple of them multiple times — and they all offer something different. They are also probably the most famous arcades in the country, so I feel like if you’re a fan of these Arcade Pilgrimage articles that I write, today’s installment may be one that you’ve been hoping for.
Galloping Ghost’s claim to fame is that it’s the largest video arcade in the US, if not the world. Continue reading “Arcade Pilgrimage: Galloping Ghost, Brookfield, IL”
Yesterday, August 2, 2018, I took a day off work.
I know, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but look, I work my tail off 6 days a week, and with a family and a lot of responsibilities, I actually don’t get a lot of time to myself to enjoy this hobby that I blog about. So I decided to give myself a day off, and hit the road on a day trip that I have had in mind for a long time.
Of course, it revolved around video games. Continue reading “Introducing the Arcade Road Trip 2018 series”
It seems that no matter what game genre we “retro” or “classic” gamers may cite as our favorite — be it platformers, maze games, puzzle games, fighting games, etc. — the shmup, or shootemup, or STG, or shooting game, or scrolling shooter, or whatever you want to call it, is almost universally revered. Despite the various strengths and weaknesses of individual titles, the shmup, as a genre, seems to be beyond reproach for many retro gamers.
Whyzzat?? Continue reading “Why Shmups?”
