Let's Read: Nintendo Power #5
Ninjas didn't just suddenly become popular with the arrival of Robert Hamburger's "Real Ultimate Power" website, that was more just the icing on the cake. For the real birth of the ninja power lovefest in the western world, you have to go back to the 1980s, when ninjas were sort of like the Nazis of film and video games. You could have them commit all sorts of heinous crimes (like kidnapping presidents or hijacking arms shipments) without anyone in the wor
I received the following message from an individual who identified himself as Leonard Huntings (though this is possibly a pseudonym). It was apparently reconstructed from an analog source and remastered for internet distribution. It's a little creepy...
Appended to this message was the video itself, which I am presenting here:
It's currently impossible to know where this video orginated, as I don't know anybody named Leonard Huntings. An educated guess would be that it somehow ti
Occasionally when the muse strikes me, I will write. Sometimes I do short stories, sometimes I work on longer ones, but often I write poetry. These are two examples from my lunch break at work today. Feel free to contemplate their meaning to myself or to you, and discuss in the comments box.
* * * * *
In my heart
I wrote the ending a million times.
In my mind
I wrote it one thousand.
In my journal
I wrote it four or five.
In my reality
It was written once
With heavy editing, not my
(Note to Penn & Teller: no infringement on your popular TV show is intended by this blog's title).
You may not know who Andrew Oliver is, or why he would make such a comment, or why I am ranting about him, and that's OK. Andrew, along with his brother Philip, is the co-founder of Blitz Games Studios, a small development house from the UK which specializes in licensed titles, especially in the realm of software aimed at younger gamers. Remember all those Xbox games Burger King sold in thei
No, seriously, ignore the hype Sony and Microsoft have been dumping into the press about their new motion controller Wii-toos for a minute, and think. Do you care about this? Do you know anybody who does? The answers you come up with, after careful consideration, are more than likely, "No," and "No," respectively. I'm not hating on either Sony or Microsoft (I own a PS3), and I'm no Nintendo fangirl (I don't own a Wii). I'm simply asking the question that nobody else in the gaming media seem
Following up on my previous blog entry, I decided I would make this concept more than a one-time deal. So this time, instead of NES titles, we'll look at my top 10 casual SNES games. Remember, this isn't about long, drawn-out games that take hours of levelling or days of practice to complete. This is about games you can pick up, play for a little while, and then put down again when you don't have very long to sit in front of your TV.
10 - Super Tennis
As noted in the previous blog, there ar
Picture this: it's the middle of the night, you're driving through the countryside by yourself, your only company is the voice of the local radio station's DJ talking at you via your stereo system. You notice you're getting low on gas, so you make a diversion to a service station for a fill-up, and that's when it happens. Everything just stops working.
You get out of the car to find out what's going on, and a mysterious energy field blocks your passage back the way you came. Now there's noth
You know what? I'm sick and tired of this decades-old mantra being trotted out by every two-bit critic who can't even be arsed to involve himself or herself with the object of his/her derision. I honestly thought we were past this nonsense when Roger Ebert first decided to throw the idea that video games cannot be art out into the open years ago. One would have assumed that the immense number of people (both gamers and developers alike) who took offense at this might have made him re-think hi
Some of you may not be familiar with Scratches, and if that's the case, then I pity you because you missed out on one of my favorite graphical adventure games of all time, and one of the creepiest games of 2006. It casts you as Michael Arthate, a horror novelist who hit paydirt with his first book and is now looking for a suitable atmosphere in which to complete his sophomore effort. His idea? Buy the oldest house he can find, and live there to let the atmosphere surround and penetrate him to
Sometimes you just can't be as hardcore a gamer as you want to be. Sure, there's nothing like sitting down and marathoning through a game like Dragon Warrior in a 20-hour stretch of levelling madness, but as you get older and summer vacations become a thing of the past, most of us don't get that kind of quality time in any longer unless you wind up both independantly wealthy and without a significant (or dependant) other.
So what do you do when you want to game, but you only have an hour or le
This is not your typical Areala blog entry, as will readily become apparent when you keep reading. I know that normally my writings deal with video games of some kind, and occasionally books, but today I decided that I have neglected music long enough, and it was time to fix that. And what better kind of music to write about than the kind that has been relegated to the clearance bins of history but that is still deserving of your attention. There's certainly plenty of it out there, especially
While unpacking some boxes of my magazines today, I ran across an issue of Dungeon magazine (number 116 to be precise, November 2004) that made me stop what I was doing and filled me with a desire to read the article advertised on the front cover. As a 30th anniversary celebration for Dungeons and Dragons, this issue listed the 30 greatest adventures of all time to appear under the D&D ruleset, any version. The list was chosen by the editors as well as a team comprised of some of the bigge
Let's Read: Nintendo Power #4
I've had a change of heart and decided to continue my "Let's Read" series for a little bit longer. I'm having fun doing it, and that's what counts, because this is my blog and I am allowed to change my mind for no reason whatsoever, so nyah.
As you can see from the cover shot, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the focus for this issue. This is a posed cover with an actor dressed as Link looking down on a manequin made up to look something like a sleep
Let's Read: Nintendo Power #3
I've always thought that every so often Nintendo chose some odd titles to give cover treatment to with their magazine, and this issue's focus on Track & Field II is probably the first time I thought this. Granted, I've never been into sports games, so that probably explains some of it. But did they really think that anybody in their right mind would list this game alongside the likes of classics such as Super Mario Bros., Metroid, or Legend of Zelda?
Let's Read: Nintendo Power #2
Powering on (bad pun, bad pun) from our last [Let's Read] brings us to Nintendo Power #2, which has probably the most infamous cover art of any Nintendo-produced magazine in the company's history. Yes, that is Simon Belmont of Castlevania fame holding Dracula's severed head by the hair. A closer inspection of the image reveals Dracula's heart, ring, fingernail, and eyeball laid out on the cloak where the evil one has fallen, and a bloody hand reaching
Let's Read : GamePro #1
Phillyman requested that I do this one next, so that's where I'm going. If this isn't where you wanted me to go, then you've only yourself to blame as nobody else spoke up. So tell me what you want me to do next with a PM or a comment, otherwise I'll start picking things myself and you'll just have to suffer anyway. Make it easy on yourselves.
GamePro #1, May/June 1989 - 60 pages - $3.50
So it's been roughly a year since Nintendo Power launched, and some
Let's Read: Nintendo Power #1
You've probably seen on YouTube or other internet video sites the "Let's Play" idea, where one person sits down with a game, a microphone, and a screen capture utility and proceeds to play through an entire game while offering running commentary, pointing out secrets, and in general just showing off what the game has to offer. Well, I'm not cool enough to have a video capture device or a microphone or the desire to sit and blabber my way through hours of
"It's time to kick ass and chew
bubblegum. And I'm all outta gum."
-- Duke Nukem
Laugh if you must, but I was one of the gamers who was utterly heartbroken to hear the long-time-coming announcement that Duke Nukem Forever was to be no more. I had long ago accepted the fact that I had been jilted, and that Duke was long gone, probably too busy off kicking alien pseudopods to bother with the likes of starring in another video game. But still inside me, there was a part, a tiny little pa
Presumably at some point Phillyman will find a better blog entry to feature on the front page than mine about why I care about old magazines and it will no longer be featured so prominantly. Since this is a sort of follow-up to the original entry, I thought I'd better make sure that I pointed to the original which can be found right under this rock here. While it is a follow-up, it's not a direct sequel, and you can easily read this entry without having read the other. I just love shameless s
November of 2009 saw the release of a new roleplaying game on the Nintendo DS (at least here in the US) entitled "Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", developed by Big Blue Bubble Inc. and published by Aspyre. In it, you take on the persona of an adventurer who is very interested in getting his (or her) hands on the loot inside the previously-abandoned Dwarven mountainhome of Firetop. Legend speaks of treasure troves of gold coins, sparkling gemstones, and magical trinkets galor
Quick: when is a Final Fantasy game not a Final Fantasy game? Answer: when Nintendo decides to rename a different Squaresoft RPG in the hopes of capitalizing on the fame of the Final Fantasy name. This was the case with a series of games released in the US on the Game Boy. In the US, we know them as Final Fantasy Legend I, II and III, and Final Fantasy Adventure.
In Japan, however, they're two completely different series. Final Fantasy Adventure is actually Seiken Densetsu, the precursor to
I will level with you by starting this blog with the caveat that I am in an incredibly foul mood at the moment. But rather than doing something constructive with my rage, like tossing small children into deep wells or drugging really ugly men at the bar and leaving them in my neighbor's front yard without their clothing again, I decided I might be better served (and avoid inconveniences like court dates and prison sentences) to compile a list of horrible Star Wars games. I'm aware that this is
"Anxious" does not even begin to describe my feelings when I discover that there is a new survival horror game coming out. As you've no doubt figured out by now if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, horror games are something I simply cannot get enough of. And while there are a number of franchises that compete for my attention, none is more apt to receive my gamer girl bucks than the perversely fascinating titles in the Silent Hill series. Having played through every entry i
I'm awakened by the sound
Of rain against my window
It's getting harder to ignore
But these tired eyes need rest.
-- "Flourescent Skies", Assemblage 23
I read a lot. I know this will make some of you wonder "when?" given the amount of time I spend going on and on about games, either playing them or writing about them, but despite the fun of interactive entertainment, there's nothing quite like a good book. Also, I make my living working in a used bookstore,
I've attempted to introduce a few real-life friends to Retromags, both through visits to the site in general and trips to my blog in particular. Several of them were quite excited by the prospect of leafing through old Nintendo Powers, especially those who are, like me, now in their early to mid thirties and remember trading cheats out of the Classified Information column on the playground or trying to figure out a way to beat Warmech in Final Fantasy. Others, though, scoffed at the idea of a
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