Friday, June 10, 2011

Super Castlevania IV Nintendo Power Scans


Scans from the January 1992 Nintendo Power covering Super Castlevania IV. I still love the layouts and the artwork they worked into their magazine spreads.

Super Castlevania IV is the shit, what more can I say? It's got the smoothest whip action in any 2-D Castlevania, a ridiculous amount of levels, great difficulty curve, amazing music, and if you haven't played it you should probably do so immediately. Don't even read the last paragraph, you could be playing Super Castlevania IV.

Anyway, enjoy the gallery! Click the images for the full size.









Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Cool NES Romhack


Cool NES romhack. Master Higgins has cool glasses and wears his hat backwards. Gameplay otherwise unchanged. Honeygirl got an update as well.

All of the other sprites looked too good to change.

Anyway, most hacks look absolutely horrible. I wanted to make something that people could actually play--mod to the classic that I'd actually play. I'm pretty happy with the results!

All the sprites are changed, no loose pixels or weird/strange/cheap graphics.

Download Cool Advent Isle

Development time: 4 hours. Check out the screenshot:





Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Pixel Art: Mite



A pixel painting inspired by Chinese art.

E3 2011: Wii U Controller Revealed



Iwata claims this isn't meant to be a portable gaming system, but you'll be able to play Wii games on the go and Wii U games without the TV.

This was a natural evolution in systems. Nintendo claiming it's not a portable system is only because of the stigma that goes along with handheld gaming being a generation behind console gaming.

It's possible you'll still need the Wii-U to be turn on and hooked to the internet for this thing to work, but perhaps not.

Nintendo calls it the future, but this thing is already the past. The Dreamcast had a portable memory card with a primitive screen, so it's hard to get excited about this thing.

Also, to be blunt, using an iPad in the store last year was enough to convince me that I never wanted another touch-screen product that didn't work as well as Apple.

As the entire world moves toward cloud computing, the idea of consoles strikes me as incredibly dated. The best games over the last few years have all been downloadable titles or indie releases (usually both). If there is one thing almost all E3 commentators have in common this year, it's the idea that somehow the industry doesn't get gamers.

The video game industry, more than anything, simply knows how to advertise. They know how to sell. They don't exactly know how to make good games because they never stopped to ask, "What makes a game good?"

"What makes a good game?" is a very different question from "How do I impress the average reviewer?" All reviewers seem to demand is big-budget appearance, "fun-factor," and "playable." What if, to be a good film, it simply had to be "fun"? Or simply "watchable"? Why don't game developers take their job more seriously? Why are most videogames, intellectually, regressing even further and reinforcing stereotypes and cliches that were barely acceptable in the '80s? Why does any philosophical discussion in a video game feel 200 years old? Why are there so many cutscenes? Why are the games so easy?

E3 2011: PixelJunk SideScroller


Moving beyond tower-defense and Robotron-style action, Q Games presented a playable demo of their new game "SideScroller" at this year's E3.

Like Gradius, the game is a verticle shmup, complete with special weapons, customizable ship, and power-ups. Weapons include homing missiles, a spin (which provides a brief invincibility), machine gun, lasers, and so on.

Be prepared for bullet hell.

The coolest thing about this game, in my opinion, are the vector graphics. The ZX Spectrum and many arcade machines could use vector graphics (everyone else might remember them from highschool physics class). At E3, Q even had CRT overlay to add to the retro feel of the demo.

PixelJunk SideScroller promises to be an exciting title for shmup fans, look for it this summer on the PSN (if it's working).


Alien Crush


Devil's Crush isn't the only pinball game worth playing on the Turbo Grafx-16, and I could post twice about Devil's Crush without considering its predecessor, Alien Crush. Both games are amazing, and if you like one, you'll enjoy the other for the sake of variety.

Many reviewers complain about the split screen in Alien Crush. But unlike Devil's Crush, in Alien Crush the board is designed to keep the ball at the top. The screen switch never presents a huge problem, and should not deter potential gamers. I suspect I'm writing to a mainly Wii audience on this one, because just about every TG-16 owner has at least one copy of this game. Pinball was serious business in the '80s.

The sci-fi theme remains me of the Alien movies, but the bonus-levels remind me more of 8-Bit shooters. Little alien monsters and snakes and bio-terrors crawl around the board. Bumpers transform into skeleton monsters and crawl around, and eyeballs open and close everywhere. The two music tracks and game speed (seriously, again, who choses the slow option?) provide a little variety to an otherwise self-similar game.

My best strategy involves opening up the big alien's mouth by hitting the 6 snake/monsters on the sides of the bottom screen. Then, launch the ball into the alien's mouth and you'll get a bonus stage. These stages are brutal, but provide a lot of points. If you beat the stage, you'll get a multiplier, and can really rack up a high score.

You need 2,000,000,000 points to beat the game. Have fun.

It's really easy to kill an hour playing one set of credits on Alien Crush, and you can't say that about most classic games. I highly recommend it if you can't get enough of Devil's Crush and need some more extreme pinball action.

VG Music: Epic Historical Medly



adolfobaez goes above and beyond your typical Mario Paint Composer youtube video by splicing some of the most truly memorable video game songs since Pac-Man. He's got some of my favorites in this thing!

Additionally, his arrangements (of Zelda and Tetris, for example) are really great. His drums sound better than the originals at times!