Like so many of the indie games I'm familiar with, I heard about Odallus through Rock Paper Shotgun. After playing Dark Souls last year, I was really interested in more games that recaptured that kind of feeling and Odallus seemed like it had a similar aesthetic. The Rock Paper Shotgun review that I read said:Death comes swiftly but there’s no ( Read more... )

Kanji? Gasp ( Read more... )

Some people played NES platformers, the Marios and Metroids and Castles vania that stride across platformer history like titans, and then moved on to the Genesis or the SNES and played Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Metroid, Mega Man X, and Gunstar Heroes. Some of the greatest platformers ever made, games that still stand the test of ( Read more... )

Gargoyle's Quest is another one of those games I learned about through Nintendo Power. I was positive that it was through the Counselor's Corner section, but I looked through most of the Nintendo Power issues that I had a child and I could only find one question asked about Gargoyle's Quest and it's not about the topic I remember. I looked up the ( Read more... )

Imagine the perfect NES game. A game with the tight controls and world map of Super Mario Brothers III, the variable weapon choices and themed bosses of Mega Man, the item design of Castlevania, and the bounding pogo jumps and treasure hunting of Duck Tales. Imagine that it could be made for modern systems and wouldn't be bound by NES limitations ( Read more... )

I first downloaded this back before I went on my trip to Oregon and I played through most of it then, but I didn't quite beat it, and it wasn't until I went to satinalien's wedding this weekend that I had more offline time where I fired it up again. It was described as "one-button platformer," so I assumed it was going to be mindless distraction that I could ( Read more... )

The problem I have with iOS games isn't anything conceptual or philosophical. I don't think they're ruining "real gaming" (whatever that means), and while freemium is a blight upon the earth, it's spread to all games everywhere know and isn't a mobile-specific thing. No, the problem is mostly that i never have time to play them. If I'm on public ( Read more... )

Until today, I'd never beaten Super Mario Brothers. I've beaten plenty of other games in the series, but every time I played the first game I'd always get stuck in the same place--World 8-1. There was a jump I couldn't make no matter how hard I tried, and eventually I just gave up and moved on. None of the other Mario games I played presented quite ( Read more... )

With this blog post, I can officially inaugurate my Nintendo Power Cover Game series. Based on how many other games I have in my backlog, I expect that it'll take me approximately twice as long as my remaining lifespan to finish, but hey, more than one constitutes a series!

Power Blade is another one of those games I saw in Nintendo Power as a ( Read more... )

Metroid is one of the franchises that makes me wonder what it means to call yourself a "fan" of a series. I mean, I could say I'm a Metroid fan, but I've only played and beaten Metroid, Super Metroid, and Metroid Fusion. I've played Metroid Prime but never beaten the final boss, and I've played Metroid II for maybe 20 minutes. That's a better ratio ( Read more... )