Articles tagged with: rgotw

RGotW: Growl takes the fight to the poachers!

Pixelcade on Wednesday, 26 August 2015. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

Welcome everyone to the revival of the Retro Game of The Week segment. This time round, I’ve picked a game that sort of reflects something that just happened and made headlines — the killing of Cecil the Lion in Africa. So keep that little current event in your heads as we explore four-player arcade game Growl by Taito!

Retro Game of the Whenever: Sonic Drift

seanstar on Saturday, 28 July 2012. Posted in Opinion, Retro Game of the Week

I was scrubbing through GameGear Sonic soundtracks on my iPod the other day and wound up reacquainting myself with what I shall call an obscure, yet noteworthy, little spin-off series. No, not Tails' Adventure or Tails' Sky Patrol; I won't subject you to those, at least not this time. Before there was Sonic Riders (in my own opinion a very playable adrenaline-twitch-racer that in some ways makes F-Zero GX look tame), and before there was Sonic R (a forgivably misguided attempt at a Sonic 3D racer, with unforgivably misguided execution), way back when Super Mario Kart was the hot thing on SNES (2 years later, to be precise), Sega had actually made one very early foray into Sonic-themed gimmick-racing: Sonic Drift.

RGotW: Castle of the Winds

seanstar on Saturday, 16 June 2012. Posted in Opinion, Retro Game of the Week

The villagers eye you with suspicion.  Among the indistinct murmurings of the crowd, you think you can make out words like "infidel," "traitor," "illegitimate," and worse.  At length, one member steps forward and clears his throat.  From his appearance, you guess correctly that he is some sort of administrator or moderator.  "We are a peaceable community.  We want nothing more than to mind our own interests and attend to our own entertainment.  You look like someone we used to know, and we are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but your actions… pardon me if I say it just doesn't sit well with a number of us to see… well, to see a WINDOWS game…"  Many members of the assembly shudder at the word, others trace warding symbols in the air; a few faint outright.  "…to see a Windows game featured prominently right here on our own front gate." 

While you assume an aluminum unibody shell is incapable of holding an edge, and that the cords on those designer-colored puck-mice aren't actually attached well enough for offensive use, you begin to feel that explaining yourself would nonetheless be a safer course of action than testing the theory.

 

 

Retro Game of the Whenever: the $250 Question...?

seanstar on Saturday, 17 March 2012. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

$250. Just pause for a minute and let that figure sink in. It's the going price for a particular game, complete-in-box. No, not Chrono Trigger. Not Final Fantasy VI. Not…okay, I have been asked to pay that much for SoldierBlade or ShockMan, props if either was your guess, but for this write-up I'm referring to a different obscure little gem, by the American studio WayForward, released in 2002 for, of all platforms, Gameboy Color. The game? Shantae. And I am tempted to say it was worth every penny.

Retro Game of the Whenever: Final Fantasy III (Famicom)

seanstar on Sunday, 12 February 2012. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

The Gurgan quietly spoke...

When I was younger, I thought Final Fantasy III was an awesome game that everyone should totally play because it was, like, the the FF Tactics jobs system before there was even a FFV. Now that I'm older and wiser, I think FFIII is a game that every fan of the series should play, in its original form (perhaps modulo fan translation), for historic context if nothing else. Very nearly every feature of Final Fantasy IV appears to have been prototyped in III.

RGot...WtF? - Valkyrie Profile

seanstar on Saturday, 17 December 2011. Posted in Opinion, Retro Game of the Week

Tri-Ace Studios, Enix, in the year 2000

<Odin> (on phone) 'lo?  … Yeah, same old same old. It's good to be the king. You? … Cool, cool. Alright, will do. 'Later!
<Freya> Who was that?
<Odin> Frank--Vanir, big horns, you've met once or twice. Says they're ready to rumble. Man, this age's Ragnarok is gonna be epic!

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

seanstar on Sunday, 24 July 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

First, thanks where thanks are due. This article would not have happened were it not for the Commonwealth-Edison electric company of greater Chicago leaving me 56 uninterrupted hours to enjoy no games requiring more power than a pack of AA batteries. Way to go.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the game. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has aged REMARKABLY WELL. Released in 1993, it is the first "out-of-canon" Zelda game in the series. Rather than focusing on gathering eight pieces of save-the-princess/defeat-Ganon hardware, Link finds himself on a mysterious island collecting musical instruments in order to awaken a mythical entity called the Wind Fish ("The Wind Fish in name only, for it is neither...") from within a giant egg on top of a mountain. Along his way, he encounters a cast of unusual characters -- some eerily reminiscent of people he knows from the outside world, some making cameos from other contemporary games, and many simply unique.

Skate or Die

Pixelcade on Sunday, 03 July 2011. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

1987 -- how rad was it? I had my Vision skate clothes and my Nash board. The NES was well on its way to making history before anyone knew it. Then there I sat at my local rental shop looking at this awesome cover of a dude doing a hand plant, with the words SKATE OR DIE emblazoned in graffiti above him

I MUST PLAY THIS GAME.

Ultra Games produced this title for our enjoyment. It featured many different play styles from downhill racing, pool jousting, and half pipe shredding, plus a couple more. We saw a few characters in the game -- like Rodney Recloose, who was the crazy dude you saw when you started the game in the skate shop. He sported a purple mohawk and tattoos. He had a crazy kid named Bionic Lester with green hair and a nasty attitude in events like the joust and downhill. He would cut you off and knock you on your face faster than you could say "shredded."