I can’t quite remember which Metal Gear game I played first. I remember a mate introducing me to the US version of Metal Gear Solid, a few months before I excitedly picked up the PAL release, and around the same time I remember snagging an original NES Metal Gear cartridge from the second hand market in Wakefield for just a fiver… Which seems like an insane bargain nearly 30 years later. What can…
Sometimes all a game needs is one good game mechanic; one thing that adds an original twist that can elevate an otherwise average game into something more engaging. R-Type Tactics has that one thing. It arguably has two. Both of them, of course, inherited from the classic 1987 shoot-‘em-up from which it originates.
I’ve been looking forward to Demonschool for as long as I’ve known about it. As a creation of Necrosoft Games, run by veteran games journalist and Insert Credit podcaster, Brandon Sheffield, it comes from a group of people who seem to have very similar taste in games to me. What’s more, it’s a tactics RPG, my favourite genre. I knew from the moment I saw it that this would be a day one purchase…
When I first heard about Boktai as an obsessive gamer in my early twenties, I knew I just had to play it. This was Hideo Kojima’s first release for a Nintendo system… A new vampire killing adventure from Konami… A mini stealth-action game in which the protagonist shares a name with Franco Nero’s 1963 spaghetti western hero, Django, and even drags a coffin behind him just like his inspiration… And,…
A few weeks ago, my four-year-old daughter was playing around with the My Mario app on Nintendo Switch. It’s a cute little free app that’s part of a range of toys and experiences designed to get kids into Mario, and I think it’s worked. My daughter somehow seems obsessed, with very little influence from me, and is almost as familiar with him as she is Mickey Mouse. She has a Mario doll that she…
Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post about the marvelous Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake and found myself wondering what it would be like to move on to the forthcoming Dragon Quest I II HD-2D Remake, knowing that the experience it offered would be significantly more primitive.
This Christmas I bought myself an Intellivision Sprint, a modern and faithful full-size recreation of the 1979 American games console, with no cartridge slot but 45 digital games built in. Mostly I bought the Sprint out of habit. Ever since the Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System launched in 2016, I’ve become a big fan of “mini” games consoles and tried to collect as many as…
I can’t remember the first time I played The Outfoxies, but it definitely wasn’t in an arcade. In fact, I’ve never seen a single coin-op version of this game in thirty years. Anyone who says they played it on release is either very lucky or very lying. Emerging at a time when 3D fighters were all the rage, and traditional 2D fighters were about to reach their zenith, The Outfoxies probably seemed…
The year is 1998... After playing Vandal Hearts and Shining Force III, I long for more great tactical RPG experiences and discover Final Fantasy Tactics in an issue of EDGE magazine. I’m very much aware of Final Fantasy at this point. I’ve dabbled in FF7 and played some of the older games via emulator, but Tactics looks different. Not just because it’s a sub-genre of RPG but also because the…
I’ve always been deeply intrigued by Dead Of The Brain, even before I’d seen a screenshot or knew what kind of a game it was. Right from that evocative if slightly nonsensical title down to the stunning box art featuring a grinning Terminator-like figure and floating brain and its dangling viscera, it looked like the perfect Halloween game for an MSX loving freak like me.