Mercs (Arcade)

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2014 - Game 2

This one might seem like a bit of a strange choice to replay as it's a pretty basic run and gun arcade shooter, not the kind of thing you need to play much of to get an impression of how it's going to carry on. Plus I got two levels into the Genesis/Mega Drive version the first time around, so it's not like I didn't give it a fair chance. But I'm reasonably sure I promised someone I'd take a look at the arcade version at some point, so here it is.

Here's something I didn't mention last time: Mercs is the second game in the Wolf of the Battlefield series and a sequel to 1985's Commando (which has absolutely nothing to do with 1985's Commando movie). It started off as an arcade game in 1990 and was ported to around seven home systems the following year (and there's no way I'm going to be comparing them all this time, sorry.)

Soleil / Crusader of Centy (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Replay

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2014 - Game 1

Super Adventures is three years old today! I don't know if that's a cause for celebration, but it's definitely cause for a brand new (hand-pixelled) logo.

Though really I should probably pretend those first few months never existed and move the birthday along a little, as the site was pretty terrible when I started off. Games were lucky if they got more than a handful of screenshots and a teaspoon full of commentary back then, as I hadn't yet gotten my head around the concept of taking the time to give them a fair chance. Actually better yet, I could do what I do at this point every year and replay a few of those games and maybe see if they get any better after the first 20 seconds.

First up is the game known in Europe as Soleil, though back when it first appeared on my site on February 2nd 2011 it was under the US title of Crusader of Centy.

Fallout: New Vegas (PC)

New Vegas is the sixth game in the Fallout franchise, released between Fallout 3 and a theoretical Fallout 4 that may or may not definitely be in development right now.

Though Bethesda are the current custodians of the series after buying it from Interplay, this game was passed on to Obsidian to make instead... which is a company founded by ex-Interplay employees. Annoyingly they haven't used their years of PC RPG developing experience to fix the issue where I have to disable my Xbox 360 controller to use the mouse in the menu though.

This is awesome theme music though, it's like a slightly wild west-tinged version of the Fallout 3 theme (youtube links, don't hate me if there's ads). I know people liked that the first two games began with classic songs by The Ink Spots, but I think its cool that the series has an original theme of its own now. One of their tunes will show up in the intro though, they always do.

(Click the images to see them at the original resolution.)

Saturday Morning RPG (PC)

Today I'm having a quick look at Saturday Morning RPG released on iPhone, Ouya, Linux, Mac and also Windows! I don't know much about it, but I'm 90% sure from the title that it's likely to be an RPG.

I should probably mention upfront that I'm friends with one of the people who worked the game, so my opinion of it is in fact worthless and should be disregarded.

(Click the screenshots to expand them into more reasonable resolutions.)

Rico: A Tale of Two Brothers (Android)

Today I'm taking a look at retro-style indie platformer Rico, because some asked me to and I'm apparently incapable of saying no. My only weakness.

Last year seems to have had more than its fair share of games with 'Two' and 'Brothers' in the title, as there was also the monochrome Game Boy inspired action RPG Two Brothers and Starbreeze's single player co-op game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Plus there was also Beyond: Two Souls and Layton Brothers just to make things more confusing. Anyway, this one's the one that's a platformer.

This is also out for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad and iPhone, but I was asked to check out the Android version specifically so that's the one I'll be looking at. It's about bloody time as well, seeing as I've gone a full three years without a single Android game on the site. Sure it looks a bit like a browser game and it probably isn't the best ambassador for the system, but hey it'll be a change.

Rage (PC)

Today I'm having a quick go at 2011 post apocalyptic FPS/racing hybrid Rage, aka. RAGE. I'm not entirely sure why they've used the circle-A anarchy symbol there in their logo, but I imagine it's for much the same reason that Neversoft used it for Apocalypse: because they could.

This came out on Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Mac, but I'll be playing the PC version on my beat up old rig. I've actually tried the game on my system once before when it first came out but I was kind of put off by the way it was a sluggish glitchy mess. But it's been a few years now so I'm hoping that all the patches and drivers updates since then have gotten it into shape. Shouldn't take long to find out.

(Click the pictures to view them at twice the resolution. That's FOUR TIMES the pixels!)

Silent Debuggers (TurboGrafx-16)

For whatever reason and despite my best intentions I didn't play nearly enough TurboGrafx or PC Engine games last year, so I figured that I'd make up for this disheartening insufficiency by playing one this year.

Silent Debuggers is... a game for that console. It was made by Data East, released in 1991, the theme tune could be described as 'funky' and it apparently has something to do with a space station. Other than that I don't know much about it, except that it might be a first person RPG type of thing.