22 | August | 2012 | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

Amusingly enough, I didn’t much care for Nintendo Power back when it launched in 1988. I wasn’t a big NES fanboy and I knew the mag was a house organ designed to pretend anything Nintendo was the best thing since sliced bread. Being system agnostic, I’ve always disliked this sort of thing when it’s that biased against other platforms, so it was quite easy to stick to my guns. Sure, Nintendo was the company that pulled the game industry out from the grave back with the successful launch of the NES in 1985, then created the dedicated portable gaming market with the original Game Boy in 1989, but that didn’t mean they (or any other game company) could always ignore other platforms that had games of equal or better quality.

Despite Nintendo’s instant deity status among millions, initially, I wasn’t too impressed with the NES because I’d played Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Popeye, and a bunch of the other classic arcade ports to death (in actual arcades) and didn’t see the need to do so all over again, no matter how good the games were. Stubborn (and stupid), wasn’t I? OK, maybe I was a tiny bit biased as well, as I somehow had little to no trouble playing some Sega Master System and later, Sega Genesis arcade ports. Ah well, nobody’s perfect, right? I did come around to the joys of the NES and later, SNES once I got my paws on Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Wizardry, The Bard’s Tale and a bunch of other RPGs I wasn’t seeing on any Sega platform, but that took a few years longer than it should have…

Continue reading →

So, I played a bit of Dragon Ball Z Kinect yesterday and (*surprise!* ) I didn’t hate it at all. It looks great (well, for a DBZ game), the controls are simple enough to understand (I’d say most fans will appreciate them more than non-fans) and yes, there’s a good workout in there with all that punching, ducking and occasional jumping you’ll be doing.I didn’t ask if there was a calorie counter option, but they will definitely be burned as this game is played…

That’s a good thing, although I’d bet once it hit stores, more kids will enjoy the game than adults. I was about to keel over like a fallen oak tree after one fight. Maybe Namco Bandai is planning some sort of revenge on jaded, out of shape games journalists who keep knocking them when they try to do something different. Then again, I’m not jaded, just really out of shape. The amount of physical exertion needed to play DBZ keeps it from really being a “casual” game experience and it looks as if families with a Kinect in the living room will be getting another game to keep them occupied (and relocating furniture before a foot goes through it).

Continue reading →