Good morning, good evening, wherever you are! This blog is for my essays, ramblings, and other thoughts on classic games. Arcade, Famicom, Master System, ...
Note: This game title is always transliterated as “Koushien” instead of “Koshien.” However, in most other contexts, the word is usually transliterated as “Koshien,” so that’s what I’ll be using here except in the game title. A crowd of 50,000 people roars at every bit of action, big and small. Bands play, cheer squads belt out fight songs, and flags are waved in a frenzy. When the final out is…
After the amazing success of Ninja Princess, I’m back on the SG-1000 with Sega’s own Safari Hunting. The original arcade version was known as Tranquilizer Gun , though it is spelled as Tranquillizer Gun on the flyer. This is a fascinating game. At its core, Safari Hunting is a maze game, and I’m a maze game guy. Pac-Man and its various spinoffs are mostly very good, and I think Nintendo’s Devil…
I’ve only played a single SG-1000 game before (Champion Baseball), but I think it’s an interesting system and wanted to try out some of the classics, so here we are with the SG-1000 version of Ninja Princess. The original game was in arcades, but this is the first home port. As the title implies, you play as a princess who is also a ninja, which is pretty neat. Poor Princess Kurumi never gets…
There’s no shortage of old games that are known primarily for their difficulty. The word “difficult” brings to mind images of Battletoads, or Ninja Gaiden, or Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Even some of the more prominent series like Mega Man and Castlevania are associated with their difficulty as much as with their actual quality. But Alex Kidd in Miracle World is supposed to be different, right? Alex is the…
In 2006, Famitsu magazine published a list of what their readers voted as the Top 100 games of all time. (I know this post is from 2007, but the list is from March 2006.) And ever since I discovered that list, I’ve been obsessed with it. There is so much to talk about here. SEGA is present but primarily for their dating sims. JRPGs dominate. The Famicom performs quite well. I’m thrilled that…
It’s oft-repeated that Yu Suzuki said that OutRun is not racing game, but a driving game*. I've caught the OutRun bug a few times over the past decade, and every time I get sucked in I think about Suzuki’s claim. And what I think, more specifically, is that it isn’t really true. This has sort of become the accepted narrative of OutRun over the years. The game is a fantasy. It lets you pick the…