Something about parody games has always intrigued me. Perhaps it’s that much present fourth wall breaking quality to them or, maybe, the jokes, usually reserved for a restricted circle of people. Going back a few decades (let’s say, to a time before PYST), parody video games seemed to be few and far between. Nightshade is…
Ah the good ol’ times of the beat ’em up, how I miss thee. Pump in your quarters and immediately get compensated with violent, in-your-face, stress relieving all-around good time. The 2D sidescrolling beat ’em up genre had its golden age in the early 90s, with smashing titles by Sega and Capcom, among others. But,…
Post apocalyptic ultra violent 80s manga and anime series Fist of the North Star, created by Buronson (yes that is a Charles Bronson reference) and Tetsuo Hara became hugely successful in Japan short after its first volumes hit the shelves. Centered around the post apocalyptic adventures of seemingly unstoppable martial artist Kenshiro, it took a…
In reviewing Anno: Mutationem, I realize how difficult is trying to explain certain aspects of game design, even harder when one is reviewing them and trying to make the reader understands how a game works (or doesn’t). The gameplay flow has always been one of my biggest problems in that regard. There is not a…
The European gaming market in the 80s, or rather, the global market was very much different to that of today. While perhaps stating the obvious, it is important to keep mind considering this article will analyze an era which we could define, generally, as “pre-globalization”. Indeed, forty years ago, well before the digital revolution and…
The Genesis Temple Podcast – Season 2 Since the first season of the podcast seemed to be appreciated by many people, I decided to soldier with The Genesis Temple Podcast season 2! I really did not expect to be able to talk to so many people that I had been following for a while. I…
In the early 80s, the industry was quite populated by women game developers, while not as many as their male counterparts, there were probably more than one might think today. Her names can be easily found in several of the magazines that, in the early 80s, would publish games sent in by programmers. Most of…
Among several of the early Italian software houses from the 80s and 90s, Genias Software seems to be quite the exception. From day one, the company intended to actually cater to the audience’s tastes, not limiting their potential audience to national borders but, instead, keen on exporting games all over Europe and the United States.…
For some reason, the first time I fired up Grapple Dog, my mind wandered back to Wonder Dog, a quite obscure 1992 Sega CD platformer by Core Design, made to promote the failed Sega Genesis Karaoke/CD machine, the Wondermega. I wasn’t exactly sure why I went back so far in time, but I was on the…
Everyone can identify that one definitive moment, the tiny magic second when a game managed to turn them from a casual part-timer into a full-time passionate gamer. Perhaps that passion, over the years, has been replaced by something else, but that hardly factors in this discussion. What matters is that mystical moment where everything else…