Archive for August 2014
Retro Game Night: Putty Squad and Gameboy Mortal Kombat
This week we finally got our hands on Mortal Kombat for the Gameboy to complete the circle and supplement the original Mortal Kombat Versions Video. Additionally the PS4 title Putty Squad is apparently pretty terrible, however the game was originally released on the SNES and we’ve got a copy to try out.
Review: Shadow Of Rome
Console: Playstation 2
Released: 2005
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Digital Release? No
Price: $6.99 (disc only), $20.00 (complete), $34.03 (sealed) – all prices according to Price Charting
I remember picking up Shadow of Rome in some pretty gloomy pawn shop a couple of years ago. It was a blind purchase, I knew nothing about the game, just read the blurb on the back thought it looked cool and saw Capcom made it which intrigued me. I started the game but soon after studies took priority and I just had to leave it to the side to return to later. Later become several years but I guess I got there in the end thanks to it being the latest entry in Gaming History 101’s Game Club series. So, lets see if Shadow of Rome is Capcom gold or an IP that should remain forgotten.
Shadow Of Rome, as the cover implies, is set in Rome. Julius Caesar has been murdered sending all of Rome into turmoil. You play as two characters – Agrippa the Roman Centurion and Octavianus, who looks very similar to another long blonde haired character in a infamous Metal Gear game. It’s up to these two characters to get to the bottom of this conspiracy. The setting is actually really well thought out, I genuinely wanted to go look up Roman history after playing this game. Despite the story of the game being a work of fiction, facts about the history of Rome are presented during loading screens. Names of characters in the game like Antonius and Pompey are also based on real characters in history. The game’s story loosely mirrors the actual fate of these characters in history as well. If nothing else Shadow of Rome will make you want to learn more about the Romans and maybe even go to a museum.
Podcast: Shadow of Rome Game Club
Between Mega Man games Inafune and a team from Capcom made a hybrid action/stealth title for the PS2 that re-created solving the murder of Julius Caesar. It released in February 2005, just one month before God of War, and provided one of the funniest, craziest, and most challenging game clubs we’ve tackled to date. Join Fred, Jam, and special guest Trees from EZMU as they conquer Shadow of Rome.
Perspective: Video Games: The Movie
I went into this film intending on writing a review, however after seeing what it has to offer I think the better article more discusses what you can expect and if, at this time, it’s worth the higher prices asked of a direct-to-digital (DTD) release.
I didn’t know about this movie until the day before it was released thanks to an interview between Giant Bomb’s Patrick Klepek and director Jeremy Snead. In their brief conversation, it becomes clear that Snead has chosen to tackle this documentary as a pop culture phenomenon and dissects it for the public. Knowing that I went into VGtM expecting it to be adjusted for a general audience and quite possibly learning nothing new that anyone who’s studied video game history didn’t already know (or could learn on this and other sites). That’s okay, as a retro gaming blogger and podcaster I know I’m working with a minority group (retro gamers) within a minority group (“core” gamers, for lack of a better term). To put it bluntly: if he made a movie specifically for us or people like us it would be a commercial failure. Not only that, but I got the feeling from some of Klepek’s line of questioning that Snead may not be quite up to snuff on his deep historical facts on gaming’s past. I’ll give him this though, his favorite video game of all time is Ikari Warriors on the NES, and that has to count for something. For appropriateness I invited over a couple of friends who are familiar with gaming but most likely knew little about the subject and also piggy-backed my wife into the audience, which is somewhat unfair because she has to listen to my historical gaming diatribes on a regular basis, and we watched this mainstream-safe documentary on more than four decades of my favorite hobby.
It wasn’t more than 10 minutes in (the film runs just around 90 mins) that I was already annoying people as I questioned, nitpicked, and vocalized by general dissatisfaction with the way Snead’s film tackled history itself. After a justified attack on my disposition, I shut the hell up and just watched the film for face value. To my surprise, I was entertained.
Gaming History 101 