BlaZeon: The Bio-Cyborg Challenge (SNES)

Today as requested, I'm taking a quick look at BlaZeon: The Bio-Cyborg Challenge, a SNES arcade port with a shiny chrome logo and absolutely zero title screen music. Looks like it should be called Blaze-On, but isn't.

Snake Rattle N Roll (NES)

And the award for twinkliest title screen goes to...

Alright, here's another requested game, Snake Rattle n Roll on the NES, created by legendary developer Rare back in the days when they made games instead of Xbox Avatars.

Spider-Man (GBA)

At last, the game that no doubt everyone's been waiting for: the GBA version of Spider-Man (The Movie)! Though this title screen music definitely ain't the Spider-Man: The Movie theme. Sounds like it'd be more at home in Spider-Man: The Old Amiga Game.

This is another case of a handheld game released alongside a console game with the same title, same cover art, same everything... except for the actual game inside the box. I get why they do it, they want to sell two games with a single marketing campaign (plus in this case it's a movie tie-in as well), I just wish they'd give each version a subtitle or something so it's clear that they're different products.

Master of Orion (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Master of Orion is a game I’ve heard mentioned many times. I’m slightly rule breaking with this one, as there was actually a section in a game guidebook that I had in the nineties which broke down this game, alongside others such as Masters of Magic and Sim City 2000. However, I don’t remember any of the pearls of wisdom from that guide at all.

Well… except for the fact that this is a game about SPACE.

As I load the game up, the title screen certainly goes along with this one thing I know. At this point I still don’t really know what Orion is. A planet? A galaxy? Wait, I think I remember ‘Orion’s Belt’ being a space thing.

No time for speculation however, as without a moment’s pause this fiery giant is attacked by a space armada!

Rescue on Fractalus! (Atari 8-bit)

Well there goes the once mighty LucasArts, shifted by Disney from 'internal development to a licensing model' a few months after their acquisition to no one's great surprise. Sure you could argue that not much has changed by this as they've basically just been licensing out Star Wars games for a good while now, though somehow I never lost hope that they could turn it around and recapture some of their former glory (and maybe even make us a damn Star Wars point and click adventure already.)

But nope, three decades after LucasArts' first appearance with Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer for the Atari 5200, the last games with their name attached ended up being Angry Birds Star Wars and Kinect fucking Star Wars. If they'd been the developer for those titles I'd say it was practically a mercy killing, but they were actually busy making the awesome looking Star Wars 1313 when the axe fell. So tragic.

Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars (GBA)

Here's another requested game for y'all: Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars, for the Game Boy Advance. A relentlessly, fervently and strenuously requested game in fact. Hopefully now I've finally gotten around to playing it I'll be able earn myself some peace.

I honestly don't know much about the Z.O.E. franchise, except that it's about giant robots shooting at each other, though I have a feeling that they tend to be 3D third person shooters. But that isn't usually the GBA's style so I don't know what to expect from this. Judging by the music I'm guessing... Ridge Racer style racing game.

Final Fantasy III (NES)

I took a look at Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II on the NES recently, so Final Fantasy III seemed like the logical next step, but I've stumbled across slight snag in my scheme: It turns out that Square never actually released the game in English. At all. The game wasn't ported across to the WonderSwan like the last two due to it being huge, so there was no PlayStation Origins release and no Dawn of Souls style port for the GBA.

Okay sure it got a full 3D remake for the DS in 2006, but that's not really the same thing. I want to see what the original game was like in all its low-tech pixelly glory and rule #3 in the column on the right says I can't play a fan translation. But I'm too stubborn to just skip the game entirely and move onto FF4, so I'm gonna do this the hard way: with a chart of Japanese letters and Google Translate.

I bet I don't even make it past the first quest.