We've actually got three (3) feature-type articles this update! First off is Que Pasa, Perro?, an early 80s-style graphic text adventure, which is downloadable and completely playable. It's entirely in Spanish, but also ridiculously silly. The 1000 Top Video Game Music Tracks Of All Time per our poll last month has also been collected together into a proper page, complete with Youtube links. I initially had a plan to assemble MP3s for all them, build a Youtube playlist, and write brief descriptions for each of the Top 100, and that may yet happen, but it's not going to be for a good awhile. And also, we have a new running feature about Video Game Books, where we review...well, video game books, old and new, English and other languages. There's not nearly enough proper books devoted to video games (that's why we wrote one), so they deserve to be catalogued a bit better than they are now.
For proper articles, the next installment in Ultima is up, which covers Quest of the Avatar (IV) through The False Prophet (VI). The earlier games have also been updated with some new pictures. Faselei! is a unique strategy game for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, which is thankfully available in English despite (apparently) not having seen a proper release in North America due to the total (and unfortunate) failure of the system. Neugier is one of the many action-RPGs for the Super Famicom, this one developed by the infamous Wolf Team, although this one never reached the US. Mission: Impossible (1998) covers the N64/PSOne game based on the Tom Cruise movie, and while it's not great, it is a good example of a pre-Metal Gear Solid stealth game. And Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom is a silly adventure game from Hudson, mostly known to English gamers for the NES port, but was actually a PC-based text adventure from years before. The graphic style is absolutely bonkers, similar to Que Pasa, Perro?
Our Spotlight Article is Radiant Silvergun, which was released on the XBLA a few weeks back. Apparently it's not doing so well? It's unfortunate, because it's a great game, but perhaps the 1200 MS price point was too high, especially since Ikaruga is not only newer but also slightly better, and still goes for 800. Nevertheless, that's still at least 1/10th of the price it had costs to get a legit copy of the Saturn game, which is an insane bargain still. And Your Weekly Kusoge is Sprung, a dating sim released at the launch of the DS, and is easily the most embarassing game that I own that isn't Bubsy 3D.
There's a small error in the Neugier article: the US cover has the caption "Faselei!".
ReplyDeleteWow, I actually bought Sprung for that very reason. It's not just a bad game, it's a laughable attempt at recreating what makes those kinds of games fun.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, the animation was surprisingly decent.
Faselei! was properly released in Europe, for what it's worth - I distinctly remember seeing a boxed copy here in the UK in an independent game shop before SNK/Aruze pulled the plug, and thinking it looked interesting (but not buying it, since I didn't have the console)
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