Dragon Warrior (NES)

Dragon Warrior may not be the first Japanese RPG ever made (not by a long shot), or even the first Japanese console RPG ever made, but it's the one that really set the template for the JRPG genre. Chunsoft grabbed the overhead view overworld adventuring from the Ultima games, the first person turn based battles from Wizardry, and fused them together with a Portopia Serial Murder Case style menu based interface to form a more accessible kind of RPG for a more mainstream audience.

Or so I've heard, I've never actually played the game. So I'm going to shut up, turn it on, and get myself educated about a piece of genuine videogame history.

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy (Jaguar) - Guest Post

Ray gets Starwing to play... what do I get?

It's our third Jaguar game, and it's called Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. If you can say that title without laughing, you're far better than I.

Starwing / Star Fox (SNES)

Now that's how you do a title screen.

On February 21st 1993, Nintendo released in Japan a game so advanced that it came with its own own on-board RISC co-processor and so revolutionary that it introduced true 3D shaded-polygon gameplay to console gamers for the first time (probably). Anyway, that game was called Star Fox (except for in the countries where it was called Starwing), and seeing as it's just turned 20 years old I figured it'd be a good time to give it a look.

I can't say I haven't played this one before, especially as there's screenshots I've taken from it scattered across the site, but I can say that I haven't really played it properly. I've never last much longer than the first level before I got distracted by something and turned it off.

Starglider 2 (Amiga)

Today I thought I'd take a look at ancient 80s space shooter Starglider 2 and it's already been worth it just because of this art at the start. That picture is just plain awesome. Fortunately the developers realised that a some people would have to eventually skip past the picture to play the game, or to do whatever else people used home computers for in the 80s, so they thoughtfully provided a poster of it in the box.

Back in the day the developers, Argonaut Software, were known for their 3d graphics know-how and a few years after Starglider 2 was released they were hired by Nintendo to develop the Super FX chip for the SNES and program a certain famous space shooter starring talking animals in spiky starfighters. So yeah this game is pretty much Star Fox's older brother.

The Great Giana Sisters (C64)

The title screen calls this The Great Gianna Sisters, though the box is adamant that it's The Great Giana Sisters with just the one 'n'. Either way this definitely isn't called Super Mario Bros., but Nintendo were of the opinion that it sure played a lot like it and scared the publisher into taking it off the market. Plus it does have kind of a similar name as well now that I think about it...

But were Nintendo being assholes again or were they in the right this time? I'm going to load it up and find out.

PO'ed (3DO) - Guest Post

On my Devastation post last FPS Friday, commenter MikPal asked "When will we get an FPS that would allow us to go crazy as a fine dining chef?"

It's time to scrape the dust off the 3DO and get PO'ed.

Metal Gear Solid (GBC)

I really hate it when developers reuse game titles. Konami were doing great when they gave their PlayStation game the name Metal Gear Solid, as no one else on Earth would have ever dreamed of putting those three words together in quite that way. It was unique, but then they had to go and ruin it by sticking the same name on something else. They could have at least given this a subtitle, maybe something clever using the initials GBC.

Fortunately the Japanese version was given the name Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, so I'm just going to call it that instead from now on.