Max Payne (PC)

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2014 - Game 4

Today on Super Adventures, Replay Week continues with my second look at Remedy's Max Payne, as seen on PC, Mac, PlayStation 2, Xbox, iOS, Android and, uh, Game Boy Advance. It also got a movie in 2008, which was utter shite (no huge surprise there).

I suppose this one's not actually technically a replay, seeing as first time around I was mostly talking about the GBA version instead, which is a great deal more isometric and a great deal less 3D. It wasn't all that terrible either (genuine huge surprise there!)

Here, have Max's theme tune to listen to while you read: youtube link, it's one of my favourites.

(Click the images to view them at a fascinating 1280x1024 resolution.)

Fatal Labyrinth (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Replay

Super Adventures in Gaming Replay 2014 - Game 3

With a distant rumbling that sounds more like screechy irritating static, rises the lavender fortress of the Fatal Labyrinth! Again!

Today I'm going to take another look at this classic Sega roguelike on the Genesis/Mega Drive. Though I don't mean I'm literally going to take just one glance at it and then turn it right off like I did last time, I promise.

Despite being a first party Sega title the game doesn't start with my beloved 'say-gah!' jingle, but just this once I can forgive them for not including it as the game is tiny. There's around 128k of content here, eight times less than your typical Genesis/Mega Drive cart. In fact this is even smaller than the average Master System game, though there's a good reason for its diminutive nature and that's because the game was actually a download only title in Japan.

Seriously, you'd connect a 1200 bit/s Meganet Mega Modem to your Mega Drive (only 47 times slower than 56k) and then download the game onto a Sega Game Library cart. Or more likely you wouldn't, as it was never released in the West and nobody bought the device in Japan. Even the home banking keypad add-on couldn't make the poor Meganet into a success! Sega eventually had to admit defeat on this one and redesigned the console in later revisions to remove the EXT modem port entirely. And that's the story of what the EXT port was for.

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.