Let’s be real for a second here, there was nothing in the late 80s and early 90s bigger than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My entire childhood, from kindergarten until about 4th grade, revolved around getting my next fix of Turtles. Even to this day, I’m something of a mark for Ninja Turtle related news [...]
Continue Reading Child’s Play- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Eerily, the moon hung full and bright yet hidden by amorphous and oblong clouds, thick as dirt and iridescent with the blackness of death. The cast iron gates are held suspended by brick and mortar that have more tales to tell than dead men have secrets to share. The castle that lay beyond the gates [...]
Continue Reading Child’s Play- Castlevania
Street Fighter. It’s the definitive fighting game. It is without a doubt the archetype for the success of the entire genre. I don’t care what franchise, what spin on the genre, weapons, no weapons, whatever—with the notable exception of boxing games—there is no fighting game that exists today that doesn’t owe Street Fighter its life. Initially, the franchise of fighters was really nothing to get overly excited with. Punch, punch, kick, punch. The games with the best fighting action were usually sidescrollers like Double Dragon or River City Ransom.
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Capcom’s Power Stone and Power Stone 2 were a rare mix of two arcade style games—button mashing side-scrollers and head-to-head fighting games. The first Power Stone was an arcade cabinet machine, which was very rare in my life as I only played it once in a random trip to my non-regional Six Flags in Massachusetts. It featured highly interactive stages that mimicked the kind of martial arts combat that one would expect in a Jackie Chan film. The 3D environments allowed for players to swing on poles and beams, throw pottery and scattered items, interact with pools of water, and essentially anything your imagination would want to do in the stage was possible. Although it was a one-on-one fighter, the game really pushed the envelope of what that meant, While other game franchises, such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Tekken (among others), were focusing on combo and finisher-based fighting styles, the Power Stone franchise was really worked on this interactive improvisation direction using Sega’s arcade hardware.
Continue Reading Power Stone and Power Stone 2
Read the original post here. Ahh, Power Stone and Power Stone 2. What’s there not to love about this franchise? Frenetic game play, check! Unique cast of characters, check! Impressive and innovative gameplay and fighting system, check all the way! What more can I say? How about something along the lines of skill, legacy, and [...]
Continue Reading Guest Post- Power Stone and Power Stone 2: A Retrospective the E-Z-E Way
I clearly remember Nintendo Power Volume 13. It was the Super Mario Brothers Strategy Guide…84 pages of unbridled secret revelation. Of course the main event was finding out that there were in fact three whistles, and also the complete map of N-Card patterns. I got mine secondhand from an older friend who had run his [...]
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Go down the steel ramp…slowly. Slowly. With the sold gold pistol held tightly in your hand you round the corners of this vast…industrial…complex. The catwalks, towers, and vents all once aimed at some constructed purpose are now closed off and emptied of all machinery except for some scattered munitions. Enemies are everywhere. Every bend could [...]
Continue Reading Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark
With his enormous sword clenched in hand he faced his beautiful and fearsome opponent. His long flowing white hair, his intense Mako infused eyes—both glowing and pale—his imposing and slender stature, his deadly courage, and evil intent; Sephiroth the one winded angel stood before him. Cloud looked upon him with reminiscent admiration, disgust, and [...]
Continue Reading Final Fantasy VII
It’s hard to quantify a classic, nay, cornerstone of gaming like Donkey Kong. It is engrained in the mind of every video game to come after it; an undeniable classic. The premise is simple use Jumpman (aka Mario) to save the girl from a giant ape through a construction site gone awry. The ape throws barrels which late burst aflame and become…well…sentient…and climb after you. The game play in the home console version is similar to that of the arcade version and the arcade version become insanely difficult.
Continue Reading The Original Donkey Kong
Years passed, Donkey Kong popped up here and there (like in Super Mario Kart for example) but in no greater role than a tip of the hat or space filler. Meanwhile it was the 90s, video game graphics and technology was explosive. The SNES was at war with the Genesis for the best…well…I don’t know if it was science or marketing, but they wanted to have the best out there. As the battle raged on Nintendo released the “FX” chip in F-Zero and Star Fox that lauded next generation graphics unlike those ever seen before (which in retrospect were just triangles of the sort that the Jaguar couldn’t hope to show!) but the real show for Nintendo came with 1994’s Donkey Kong Country.
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This month in Child’s Play, I’m going to run a different route than usual. As you well know, dear and loyal reader, this here is a classic video game column. I tend to look at games in series, or at least franchises, and look at their history and review either their totality or a particular favorite of mine. This month, I’ve decided to take a walk down a slightly newer path. Let’s take a look at a few of the iOS app games I’ve been playing recently and determine any relationship to franchises, series, and themes where possible to stay consistent with the dialogue of this column.
Continue Reading Worthwhile Time Wasting iOS Apps
Welcome back gamers! In last month’s installment of this most inspiring column we looked at some games on the iOS device that have absolutely been monopolizing the time I should be spending doing more productive things. As you are all aware by now, this column is mostly devoted to retro and classic gaming (as defined solely by my tastes and distinctions that is!) and as such I thought it might be appropriate to provide a list of such games that have been ported as apps to the iOS.
Continue Reading iOS Ports
The following is from a guest post from one of our newest EYS Feature Columnists, Ray Carter: Greetings fellow gamers! This is your new columnist Ray Carter!! You can just call me Ray (it saves time). On this premier section, I will be following up on an article that Brandon Melendez wrote about previously. [...]
Continue Reading A Teaser from Ray Carter: What NOT to port to iOS
There was something magical about the simplicity of the old school gaming. The graphics were all pushing the limits of limited technology, the controls were innovative, involving combinations that had to be easily mastered yet varied enough to provide attack and movement options, but perhaps some of the most beautiful work to come out of old school gaming was the music. No system or cabinet hardware is as musically awesome or memorable as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The amazing thing about the NES, musically, is that even with a limited set of synththetic sounds to make 8-bit midi soundtracks and score, different companies managed to have distinct styles and feels to their different soundtracks. For example, Capcom games always have superior music…and they continue to have great music to this day. The music in Castlevania was without parallel in setting the tone. Nintendo tends to have highly musical, and endless appropriate music that you would never expect (for example did you know that the Super Mario Bros theme is a waltz?). To this day, people of my generation and younger love the music that captured their imaginations as kids. With that said, many of them grow up to become musicians—really talented ones—and cannot help themselves but to learn how to play these tunes that are as fundamental to their sensibility of music as any other compositions. When I first started to learn guitar and bass back in the late 90s, I know that I did.
Continue Reading Great Cover Versions of NES Tunes
