Archive for 2016
Yes, We Know It’s the 30th Anniversary of The Legend of Zelda
On February 21, 1986 a fantastic game released that featured a green-dressed hero named Link who went on a quest to save Princess Zelda and secure the triforce of power. That game was not, at the time, known as The Legend of Zelda. It was entitled Zelda no Densetsu: The Hyrule Fantasy and it didn’t release on the NES, it released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan. No golden carts – although as a launch title it did have a yellow disk – and not a turning point in the US for the action RPG. That wouldn’t come until about 18 months later when the cart-based version The Legend of Zelda released in the United States and eventually UK that holiday. I know people roll their eyes when I make this distinction, but I really think it’s important to judge a release date by the world it entered into. Imagine if the time machine were to pull up to you today and Doc Brown was asking you to jump in the DeLorean and head back to the time where you could play The Legend of Zelda. Unless you plan on arriving in Japan and buying an FDS as well, you would not go back to February 21, 1986, you would go back to August 22, 1987 (and that’s assuming the pathetic US release date is accurate) or even November 15, 1987 in parts of Europe.
That’s why we won’t be doing a classic release piece that remembers and loves The Legend of Zelda for its 30 years of classic gaming, because we aren’t there yet, we’re still a year and a half off. That and we, unlike most game sites, don’t have to worry about click bait, advertisers, traffic, or being a business. Lucky us. On August 22, 2017 (or whatever the debated release date will be at that time), come back and we will have a great eulogy to The Legend of Zelda and its epic legacy that, by that time, will have a major release on every single Nintendo console in history. Don’t worry, though, we’ve done enough Legend of Zelda coverage to give you a little. Enjoy.
Let’s Talk About the Coleco Chameleon
This past weekend at the Toy Fair 2016, Coleco (yes the Connecticut Leather Company that was also responsible for the ColecoVision in 1982) announced the Coleco Chameleon. If that shell in the top image looks familiar it’s for several reasons. You may have noticed it’s a re-purposed Atari Jaguar shell, which the manufacturer has legally acquired. You may also seem to remember something that looks like it in the past, which is the Retro VGS console that is the exact same item. Basically the Coleco Chameleon is a failed project from late last year that has been brought back to life in a re-branding attempt that coincides with a Chicago-based firm, River West Brands, to bring back the Coleco name. While the retro gamer in me likes the heart behind it – and trust me, having met and spoken with Retro VGS president Mike Kennedy, his love is legit – the Coleco Chameleon is a merging of nostalgic minds who won’t let go of the past in conjunction with money-hungry corporations looking to make a quick buck off people like us. I haven’t seen anyone cover the actual grassroots concept of the the idea behind the Retro VGS/Coleco Chameleon with any degree of actual fact checking, true helpful information, or even a hint as to what this could be. Even my beloved CNET let me down with this lackluster hype piece from earlier this week (and it’s from my favorite writer, Jeff Bakalar, whom I loved pre-Beastcast). Let’s take a good long look at the Coleco Chameleon, it’s trek to this point, and determine if there’s any reason you should care that on February 26 the Kickstarter gives you the opportunity at one. (NOTE: There is an 02/22/2016 update to this article that appears at the bottom.)
Podcast: The Keyboard is the Computer
Microcomputers were a significant part of gaming in the world for the better part of the 80s and early 90s. In the United States, they were more of a hobby at lower price points or only for those willing to shell out large sums. That all changed in 1982 when the Commodore 64 hit the market. In other countries, the C64 was present and significant, but not quite to the degree as in the US. In a time when the console world was crashing, the C64 became the go-to gaming platform for the early to mid 80s. Special guest Eric Bouchard from Everyday Gamers joins Fred to discuss their childhood microcomputer with a plethora of great games.
Collector’s Cache: Fred’s Playstation 2 Games
In the interest of the collectors, we’re going to start covering the games we have collected over the years. Today starts off with one of my (Fred’s) favorite consoles: Playstation 2. PS2 is significant because I was busy in college, career, and a girlfriend that my gaming took a backseat and, frankly, I sided with Xbox/Gamecube for that generation. Now revisiting this console there is a wide variety of unique games and this collection just scrapes the surface. Here’s a look at the games I choose to keep around outside of random pick-ups and digital re-releases:
Nier Quick Look
Fred tackles the next game in his quest for conquering cult classics. Nier is quite possibly the title from last generation with the most cult appeal and with last year’s announcement of a sequel it’s time to get it done. This series will continue to grow in both this post and on the playlist on YouTube. See the video description on YouTube for timestamps of the different sections.
***The live stream had issues until around 13:30, if you can’t handle choppy video/sound then you may want to skip to there.***
Footage was taken from a live stream of this session on twitch.tv/gh101. This series airs Wendesdays at 11pm Eastern, but additional sessions may be announced. Follow @TheRealGH101 on twitter to get announcement details. Each episode will later be uploaded on this channel.
Podcast: Genre Study of Platformers (Part 1)
This week Fred and Jam begin to tackle the evolution of genres. One of the biggest and earliest influences is definitely the Platformer. In this episode they discuss the early instances, gameplay mechanics, and eventually what comes to define the genre. In what will have to be a multi-part series, this episode covers a majority of 1978-1990.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Substance Review
Editor’s Note: Jam originally wrote this review back in August of 2015 and somehow I missed it for almost six months. This won’t happen again but I figured we should still show love to a great game and a great review. Sorry Jam.
Metal Gear Solid 2 was possibly one of my most anticipated video games back in my youth. I eagerly awaited its release in 2002 (a little later than the rest of the world in Europe because game companies hate us). Kojima had been very smart in teasing the hotly anticipated sequel to the PS2 classic with various trailers and that infamous pack in demo with the full retail game Zone of The Enders, which no one played. We just couldn’t wait to play as Snake. On release I’m happy to admit my fan boy goggles were literally set to “Fan-tastic” as I played this game and loved the ever loving hell out of it and not buying in to some of the games criticisms post release. Well I’m older and detestably more mature so its time to return to the title and see how it fairs today. To research for this review I played through the game on the the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on Xbox 360 and PSVita. The game had multiple releases on a lot of consoles but this review pretty much speaks to every version of the game.
Metal Gear Solid 2 puts you back into the shoes of the legendary Solid Snake, who has now gone rouge with his new pal Otacon from the first Solid game. They have formed the ultimate bro-mance to travel the world and take down metal gears (those are bipedal tanks if you’re not up to date with the series). Snake ends up on a ship passing through the Hudson River in a scene which is frankly fantastic if you’re a fan of cinema. Snake casually smokes a cig in his rain coat and gradually picks up his pace to then bungee jump off a bridge onto a ship. Re-watching this cinematic is still wonderful and possibly my favourite opening in the series. So you’re all happy playing as your hero Solid Snake. You fight a Russian girl, you take pictures of a metal gear along with sleeping soldiers, and then the game ends. Well, at least your control of Snake ends. It has become known as the biggest historic bitch slap to the face of gaming history. After playing literally a couple of hours of the game, you are then put into the shoes of the far less interesting character: Raiden. Yeah, Raiden is no Solid Snake. He has blonde hair, is pretty skinny, and lacks that testosterone appeal that we are used to from the much preferred Solid Snake. So you play as Raiden thinking “no big deal we’ll get back to Snake soon.” Wrong! You continue as Raiden for the rest of the game. So it’s kinda of disappointing but doesn’t completely ruin the gaming, its just not the Metal Gear story we were expecting.
Retrospective: Saint’s Row
When Grand Theft Auto III hit the Playstation 2 in 2001 it was unlike anything we had seen before. Sure, the sandbox concept had been dabbled with from time to time and by the name alone it’s clear that Grand Theft Auto had been an established franchise, car stealing and hooker beating included. It was GTA III that put everything together and re-established the concept of 3D world building and open variety of player choice. Despite all the freedom of GTA III – not to mention the fact that most of my friends have explored Liberty City and put tens of hours into the game but never played more than the first handful of missions – it’s a very linear game. Not only that, but as missions progress the game gets quite difficult and the open alive city is a drawback to completing missions. That’s where Volition and Saint’s Row step in to attempt the next step: an open world where everything you do from running around to side missions affect the main story.
Saint’s Row began life in 2003 as a PS2 game called Bling Bling. Senior producer Greg Donovan discussed the genesis of the title at GDC 2014 and the difficulty of pitching the game to THQ, which up to this point had not published anything like it. Donovan and his team envisioned a game about a free world and all the minutia that make up that open world to recreate the gangster lifestyle. The actual phrasing from the pitch video was, “Bling Bling is a third person action game about style, music, gangs, and guns. It is the video game equivalent to a rap music video.” Donovan and developer interviews since haven’t been too forthcoming with how the game eventually became a sandbox open world game, but given that both GTA III and Vice City were already out when Bling Bling began development it almost makes sense that it would take on the same style.
Podcast: Don’t Call It A Comeback
This week Fred gets stuck at work so Jam takes over hosting duties and teams up with 42 Level One’s Andy to discuss games that need to come back. Now they are both European, so expect a good deal of Sega titles as well as some audience participation. Actually Fred is a little worried he may no longer have a job, guess we’ll see next week.
Unreleased Game: Saint’s Row Undercover
Last week developer Volition, best known for the Saint’s Row franchise, discussed its canceled game on PSP Saint’s Row Undercover. It started out as a PSP port of the second game in the series, but expanded into something more. In addition, the company sat down with magazine Game Informer and turned a standard interview into a 4-part nearly hour long documentary on the company. In addition, Volition released a 122 page PDF that is basically a design doc and walkthrough of the title. With all of this amazing transparency, and the release of the prototype itself online, we just had to take a look.
I would love to give you a crazy video that details all of the wacky things you can do, but honestly the game lacks any true definition. Now to be fair, it shouldn’t have any definition, it was a game the developer was prototyping for potential release and then was canned. I take this moment and brief write-up to mention it only because people have asked me in the past why I haven’t covered Resident Evil 1.5 (ie: Resident Evil 2′s original version) and other unreleased demos/alphas/prototypes that have been set free on the Internet and it’s basically because not much is there. The story, design docs, interviews, and concepts of what Resident Evil 4 or Saint’s Row Undercover could have been are fantastic and interesting, but what remains that can be played are shells of a game. Anyway the links are there, have fun with it, personally I find it to be derivative of the Grand Theft Auto “Stories” games that came out on PSP, but then early on that’s all Saint’s Row was until it defined itself. It also gives me an opportunity to cover Volition and Saint’s Row all week, so stay tuned for some wacky articles.
Gaming History 101 