NICE and thank you, SCEJ! Since that PS Vita tv announcement in Japan is quite the big deal. Wayforward Technologies has decided to add the game to its list of things to do. Excellent and yes indeed, the more, the merrier. 3DS owners, sorry, but you’re getting a completely separate new game to play, as your system isn’t powerful enough to handle what’s coming (just a fact!). Still, this means Vita-only fans aren’t left out of the Shantae loop this time, so Huzzah and all that.
Well, well, well… I haven’t played I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream in about 15 years, but it’s definitely one of those games that sticks in the corners of your brain long after it’s been explored. Based on Harlan Ellison’s 1968 Hugo Award-winning story, this is an adventure game geared for adults that’s pretty unsettling and requires quite a bit of brainpower to make it through some of the trickier bits. Ellison himself appears in the game as the voice of AM, a not so benevolent supercomputer (OK, more like a slightly too malevolent supercomputer) that decided to put the last few remaining humans through the wringer in more ways than one. Best of all, gog.com has it now for a mere $5.99 and yes indeed, you sure look as if you need to be scared half to death this weekend.
Look at the bright side, though… at least you’ll be safe at home when you’re freaked out of your skin…
What the what? I had to do a double take when I saw this news, as Shatae has all of a sudden hit the gaming limelight three times this year and these last two titles are going to no doubt get her on the minds of many more gamers out there. Granted, the currently in development Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse is ONLY for the Nintendo 3DS (but I’m guessing it will run on the new 2DS), but I and I’m betting nearly every Vita owner wants their own version of this game so they can see what all the fuss is about. I’m gathering Wayforward needs to hear from Vita owners (and PS3/PS4 owners) because this magic gal is the life of the party when it comes to delivering the classic gaming greatness that’s never going to die. Color me happier by the minute – keep it up Wayforward and the top of my head will flip clean off from smiling too broadly!
If you’re big into DRM-free classic and indie games, you should already know by now that gog.com is the place to poke around for your content fix and yes, they continue to add some great old as well as new titles well worth checking out. Here’s a quick peek at two from this week’s batch:
The Chaos Engine was a fantastic Amiga game from The Bitmap Brothers that was so good it was ported to both the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo (and retitled Soldiers of Fortune in North America). It’s a top down shooter that’s not a simple run & gun at all, but a game that takes practice and patience (in large doses) in order to succeed. Nice 16-bit visuals with a steampunk vibe working away, challenging gameplay that keeps you on your toes, a cool soundtrack and plenty of surprises await in this solid little blast from the past. It’s ten bucks, supports co-op play (break out that second controller) and will most certainly test your skills at dealing with sudden alien surprises. And teleports that bring in MORE alien surprises. This game doesn’t play when it comes to making you sweat that small stuff.
With its intentionally stylized chunky polygon visuals, Shelter may look like an old PlayStation era game buffed up a bit, but it’s a really cool indie title from indie developer Might and Delight that’s got a simple premise that should get non-gamers to want to try this out. You play as a mother badger who needs to try and keep her five cubs alive as long as possible during a series of linear levels where nature is your biggest enemy. Feeding them is key, but keeping an eye peeled for that hungry eagle while traveling through the forest adds a layer of tension, as does rainy weather, darkness and a few other elements you’ll soon see. Think of this as playing through an episode of Nature or some other PBS documentary and you sort of get the idea.
Replay value seems high here, as there’s going to be that time you lost ALL your cubs and you’ll want to do better the next time. That circle of life stuff can be a bitch, but I sort of wish humans needed to go through the same stuff these days, as whittling the pack down to the smartest over the strongest might make some things better off. Anyway, if your maternal urges are swelling right about now, you know what to do. No, not THAT (this is a family show!)… I meant go snap up some Shelter of your own for a mere $8.99 and keep your cubs out of harm’s way!
Yeah, yeah… I a bit late in picking this awesome deal up (it was released on August 6), but the RPG Trifecta Pack is all mine and I just saved a few hundred bucks in the process by not tracking down the out of production cart versions. Granted, the collector in me still wants to shell out for the two Genesis RPGs I’m missing from Super Fighter Team (I already have one of the few hundred copies of Star Odyssey here in the library), but this set will most certainly do.
Amusingly enough, if you happen to be the owner of a creaky PC from the last century, guess what? All of the games will actually run on any system with the following operating systems: Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP, ME, and 98SE (which is amazing but not unexpected, given emulation works well on any modern PC). Mac users? Well, you’ll need Mac OS X 10.5 and above. I don’t own a Mac, so I have no clue if that’s good, bad or ugly, but if you’re jumping up and down at home or the office, it’s all good. OK, I need to shut up and get downloading. Well, it’s only a 4MB file, so it’ll be quick, even on a crappy dial-up connection. Of course, I won’t get to PLAY any of these three until I whittle down my backlog here, so I guess this is an early holiday gift for myself – whee!
Back in April, gog.com had a very cool sale on an assortment of Dungeons and Dragons PC games and I think I was lamenting (with a really tiny violin solo in the background playing away) about not having enough time to play the games I already had in that lovely set to buy any more D&D titles. Well, I get a second chance (and so do YOU) as the sale is back with ten mostly massive role-playing experiences for a mere $26.40. The cool thing is if you already own any of these titles thanks to a gog.com purchase, you actually get a discount applied to your total. Nice.
Of course, given that the potential of a few hundred (if not THOUSAND plus) hours of gameplay lie in wait for you once you click that BUY NOW tab, you may want to invest in a few emergency rations and start e-mailing people you know to tell them you won’t be around for a while. If you really want to get them buzzing, tell them you’ve been summoned to a dungeon or something similarly vague yet eye-popping before you stop answering calls and emails. That should get them thinking about your extracurricular lifestyle activities, right? And by the way, I still have no time to buy any new epic until I clear through a few I’ve started already. I really need a TARDIS, people…
OK, it’s finally here and it’s a really rainy day outside (well, at least it is here, bleh!). So… you know what to do, folks. PROTIP: Play on Easy first. This way, you get to learn the levels and be prepared, as the game gets pretty darn old-school tough on the harder difficulties. That’s not my review, though – that will go up around the weekend. Shutting up now, as I have some piles of gold to collect for my bank vault/swimming pool…
As an old fogey, I can’t recall a year not going by since 1980 without playing a Pac-Man game. Granted, I’m sure a lot of other people can say that, but it’s pretty incredible that the dot-munching, ghost avoiding/chasing character has held up for over 30 years. Of course, next to the arcade classic, the best ways to play a good game of Pac-Man these days is by hopping online and getting in some quality time with the excellently addictive Pac-Man Championship Edition on the Xbox 360, which is finally getting a content upgrade soon in the form of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. The original game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, while DX made its Windows 8 debut earlier this year. Pac-fans old and new will LOVE this one for its spin on the classic game, the funky HD neon visuals and the lighting fast pace of the game that’s bound to keep you playing ’til the wee hours…
A quickie description of Corundum Games’ first titleInvasodado- The Cube Invaders would probably go something like this: Space Invaders marries a Match 3 puzzle game and like any couple, a good fight breaks out as the two halves battle it out over their differences. Of course, a winner is YOU thanks to the mix working so well. Anyway, this free open source download is a mighty fine way to kill a few too many hours and also wish for perfectly working time travel. Could you imagine the millions this tiny NYC (Go, hometown!) developer would have made back in the late 70’s and early 80’s if this one was an Atari cartridge? Or hell, what the size of the pile of loot they’d be sitting on if this was a NES and/or Game Boy pack-in?
Yeah, Invasodado has that deceptively simple retro thing working for it BIG time. It’s really easy to play but of course, you get that side order of tough to master as any classic game should be. The visual familiarity brings an instant smile and makes wanting to try a few waves a total no-brainer. As in Space Invaders, blast down those pesky invaders before they reach your base ship at the bottom of the screen and you’re halfway there. However, you’ll also need to pay attention to the colors of the aliens you shoot so you can match and take out the colored blocks stacking up before they reach the top of the screen. You can also clear a column of colors by shooting down a special target that drifts across the screen at random intervals (a good thing if those blocks are stacking up too high).
You can play for a few minutes and get your fix in, but I’m betting a few of you who really appreciate this style of visual and vintage gaming bliss will be hooked in for wave after wave (which should make for some bizarre dreams later on, I’d bet). Anyway, let’s keep this short because you have a game to download (yes, it’s FREE!). I’d actually love to see this get enough of an audience so it can be ported over to the 3DS and Vita at some point (which will hopefully make Corundum some money), but I guess we’ll see what happens in the future. Hey, if anything, the game will prepare a whole new generation for alien defense tactics (er, provided those particular space invaders move in predictable back and forth patterns and come in bright colors making them easy to shoot down and those cubes they transform into or drop don’t hurt if they fall on your head). Anyway, stop reading this and go download already!
OK, I’m still getting ready to reboot the engines here, so here’s a little old post from Digital Press to tide you fine folks over: Yeah, it’s long as hell (well, for the short attention span crowd) and no pictures means a bit of a wall to climb, but it’s a mere 11 paragraphs and not a bad read if I do say so myself. That and if you have a stack of disc-based games from a few console generations ago (or even some old PC games), it’s worth popping them into a CD player to see what you can unearth.
NICE and thank you, SCEJ! Since that PS Vita tv announcement in Japan is quite the big deal. Wayforward Technologies has decided to add the game to its list of things to do. Excellent and yes indeed, the more, the merrier. 3DS owners, sorry, but you’re getting a completely separate new game to play, as your system isn’t powerful enough to handle what’s coming (just a fact!). Still, this means Vita-only fans aren’t left out of the Shantae loop this time, so Huzzah and all that.
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 