Posts Tagged ‘genesis’
Video Game Purists Ep 86: Mocking Skill Point
This week Trees talks about his true current favorite game: the Peloton. Fred spends most of his time waiting for car repairs and watching movies. On the gaming front Trees continues to repair cars, play golf, and delve deeper into the original Spyro thanks to the facelift of the Re-Ignited trilogy. Trees also delves into the Series X version of one of his favorites, No Man’s Sky. Fred is chasing the Halloween dragon with varied success. Visage, a walking sim horror title on Game Pass, fails to keep his attention. Meanwhile hardcore action titles like The Suffering and Quake fill that gap nicely. He also took the time to look into N64 and Genesis titles released to Switch Online customers that have the Expansion Pack, and while there are clear flaws it’s not the disaster the Internet is harping on.
This episode’s closing song is the Halloween theme as remixed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
RetroActive Episode 2: Half-Life (1998)
For the second episode of RetroActive, we decided to tackle something light: Half-Life. Quite possibly one of the biggest and most influential first-person shooters ever released, Valve not only used the franchise to evolve the genre, but the sequel is also how they made the service Steam a household name. Jamalais (yes, Jam!) returns to discuss this powerhouse title. Also on this episode: hardware guide to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and the real deal on framerate analysis. All songs featured in this episode are from the official Half-Life soundtrack.
0:00 – Intro – Closing Theme
0:54 – Editorial: Toxic Behavior
5:52 – Klaxton Beat
6:50 – Hardware: Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
32:10 – Diabolical Adrenaline Guitar
33:10 – Half-Life (1998) Discussion with Guest Jamalais
2:03:03 – Traveling Through Limbo
2:04:03 – Framerate Analysis and Next Episode
2:15:14 – Valve Theme
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Video Game Purists Episode 57: 7 to 10 Days
This week is more about catch-up. Trees is living a complicated life due to a new visitor in his home while Fred hasn’t been up to a whole lot of anything. On the gaming front Trees has started (and may be done with) Empire of Sin, showed his son Minecraft, and thoroughly enjoying family time with Splatoon 2. Fred replaced his Genesis with a Gen 2 V4, goes hot and cold on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, wraps up Resident Evil 7 again, and has a surprise reveal from Days Gone.
VGP Episode 7: Shenanigans at the Lock-In
This week Fred and Trees decided to stay indoors for no reason whatsoever. Despite this they still managed to replace hot water heaters, dishwashers, attack birds in dryer vents, talk the new Xbox, shop for retro games and comics, not to mention wrap up Watch Dogs and enjoy some wholesome hours in “Warzone”, the new free-to-play game/mode for Modern Warfare.
Opening Song: Facehammer – Ozzed (check out his amazing chiptunes at ozzed.net)
Closing Song: Praxis Palace – Josh Mancell
GHX Ep 42: It Isn’t Broken
Despite what it seems, this really is a video game podcast, we just like some personal tales before getting started. Once the stories of Trees’ epic New Hammy vacation are over it’s time to talk about retro gaming collections, getting screwed over on Craigslist, the unabashed love of Kingdom Hearts, and beloved franchises that maybe no one ever really loved.
Podcast: Silent Evil Gaiden
Special guest Vos joins. Resident Evil and Silent Hill are known for the canonical tales in the numbered storylines, but amidst the biological warfare and haunted towns lies a lesser appreciated series of tales. Enter the “gaiden” or side story. These are the titles on the lesser known consoles, portables, and even mobile phones that surprisingly create unique gameplay and plotlines that, while not as appreciated, are welcome additions to the library.
Community Choice: Top 10 Genesis/Mega Drive Games
When Jam and I posted the Top 10 Genesis/Mega Drive games we knew that given our two styles and having to find a top 10 was going to be difficult and pretty much hated on without a true Sonic game. What is even better was that you all in the community came together and commented, wrote in, and gave us your favorite top 10s. We then compiled all the games and gave them a point value based on the location on each person’s top ten (number 10 = 1 point, 9 = 2 points, and all the way to number 1 = 10 points) and generated the community top 10. For better or worse, here’s the community voted upon Top 10:
10. Fatal Labyrinth
9. Streets of Rage
8. Vectorman
7. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
6. Mortal Kombat
5. Gunstar Heroes
4. Aladdin
3. Shining Force II
2. Streets of Rage 2
1. Sonic the Hedgehog 2
So there you go, the much more balanced top 10 voted on by all of you out there. In the upcoming months we are going to do the editors versus the community on future top 10’s, all with participants being entered to win a prize, so stick with us for more top 10 criticism.
Podcast: The Treasure Box
This week Trees returns and we are talking about the Japanese developer Treasure, best known for some of the most impressive games on Sega’s consoles (Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Guardian Heroes, and Ikaruga) as well as Nintendo’s later consoles (Bangai-O and Sin & Punishment). We discuss the company origins, values, and of course the entire library of this impressive developer.
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Below is a video of an unreleased (canceled) title, Tiny Toons: Defenders of the Universe. The beta that was presumably used as a trade show demo eventually leaked on the internet. We have acquired it and played it on an original, modded, PS2. Enjoy!
Buying Guide: Sega Genesis (plus Sega CD and 32X)
Behold “Frankenconsole”
We all love our retro consoles, but in many cases the consoles we are buying are because they are cheap enough or we have enough money to purchase what we never were able to in our youth. Unfortunately the business of making used retro items available to the masses can at times be a money grubbing market where consumers are deceived by people they will never meet in real life. As an individual who has spent the last decade scouring the local area, conventions, eBay, and the internet as a whole I have learned many valuable lessons. For that reason I present my buying guide series, which is a handy quick guide to knowing what to purchase and what will cost an arm and a leg to replace.
We have finally come to the console I started this entire buying guide series for: the Sega Genesis (and its many add-ons). With a short period of its life having a 55 percent market share over the SNES (the year it launched, mind you), there were plenty of households who had a Sega Genesis. So many, in fact, that there were five different versions of the console and 3 iterations! Depending on the console version, your specs will vary but the list of what you need should stay the same so I’m going to run over the list.
First of all, figure out which model you want, here’s the gallery of what they look like:
Genre Study: Japanese RPGs (JRPGs)
Nowadays when people refer to a “JRPG” it’s either associated with a flood of nostalgic love for a handful of long-running series or a groan as modern Japanese companies try to capture the form of evolution that many game players strive for. This is because modern day JRPGs aren’t a whole lot different from the ones that started life and popularity back in the 16-bit era in Japan and the 32-bit era in America. If you’re not too familiar with or have never played any of these games, modern or classic, you may wonder why games that follow a well-known and successful formula may fail. Sure, gamers’ tastes have changed to a certain extent, but there’s still plenty of us that love to play these classic titles and have no problem sinking tens of hundreds of hours into beating them all over again. Unfortunately for modern titles of this ilk, they suffer from a lack of resources and that personal touch that made the older games so charming. Even when they do, like the recent Wii release The Last Story, these titles still can’t hold a candle to the heavy hitters of history. As a result fans of the genre have pretty much independently decided to freeze this genre, and its subsequent games, in time and appreciate that era as exactly that: a specific time of genre-specific gaming bliss. This makes it difficult for modern gamers trying to break into the genre because the amount of time to complete most games is much lower these days, lack of explanation and exploration are things of the past, and the price tags on the “classics” are either sky high or dirt cheap for the “poor ports.” For that reason, we’ve compiled a basic overview of the genre as a whole, it’s roots, and the factors that make a title considered JRPG. At the end we also suggest a handful of very accessible titles that are good for those starting out, especially with many of the classics porting to handhelds with varying results, and will continue coverage throughout this site.
Gaming History 101 