Tuesday, November 19, 2013

In our forum thread for last update's Mickey Mania article, we spent a bit of time discussing how 8/16-bit European developed platformers had elements which very clearly gave away their origins, and, on a broad level, just weren't as good as many Japanese developed ones. To counter that, Derboo wrote up an article on Lionheart, a forgotten Amiga classic that has the virtue of that gorgeous bright European style while still being an excellent game in its own right.

In general, we have a fascination with American or European games that get ported to Japanese platforms to see how they handle it. Law of the West originated on the Commodore 64 and Apple II, but also ended up on the Famicom and PC88, with some minor changes in the former's case to accomodate the console audience. The game itself is interesting because it might very well be the first instance of dialogue trees, even though it's not explicitly an adventure game or an RPG, but rather, more of a broad "sheriff simulator". I also posted the article for Murder on the Mississippi, which again originated on the Commodore 64 and Apple II platforms, but was ported to the Famicom and MSX2 courtesy of Jaleco, probably to capitalize on the murder mystery crazy due to the success of Yuji Horii's Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken. In both of these cases, the Nintendo versions were not re-released out of Japan, making them weird little exclusives. I'd like to run a feature on more of these, someday!

We're rounding out these with an article on Trog, a single screen action game from Midway that uses claymation, and is generally like a more violent version of Pac-Man. It's probably most remembered for being featured prominently in the arcade scene in Terminator 2. The Secret Files article has also been updated to include a review of the third game in the popular German adventure game series, though unfortunately it seems to be pretty terrible.

The iOS Shooter article has been updated with more arena shooters, most of them taking after Asteroids in some way. The most interesting (or bizarre) of these is Facetroids, which makes enemies out of pictures from your Facebook account. And episode 23 of Game Club 199X discusses Sweet Home, Capcom's ur-survival horror game for the Famicom, which was also based on a movie from around the same time.

Finally, the HG101 Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures is featured as part of the Video Game StoryBundle, which includes eight quality video game related books and zines packed together for a low price. You can pay $3 or more to get our book plus Dreamcast Worlds by Zoya Street, Kill Screen Issues 1 and 7, Blue Wizard Is About To Die by Seth Barkan (a lovably goofy poetry book) and Vaporware by Richard Dansky. Pay $10 or more and get Rise of the Videogame Zinesters by Anna Anthropy, A Slow Year by Ian Bogost, and Replay: The History of Video Games by Tristan Donovan. It's a great selection of stuff for a low price, so please do check it out!

1 comment:

  1. The proto version of Trog sounds kinda like Dreamcast (and gba) puzzler; Chu Chu Rocket. nice.

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