I have been reading Console Wars by Blake J. Harris recently. I have not finished it, but it's been a good read, and very insightful to the goings-on in the early 90's video game scene. The Sega Genesis has been one of my favorite consoles for a good long time now, and may just be my favorite console of all time. This website has already seen a top ten of Genesis games, but I have my own opinion, I swear!
In a realm beyond sight,
The sky shines gold, not blue.
There, the Triforce's might
Makes mortal dreams come true.
Here at Retro of the Week, we talk about retro games a lot, but why do we yearn for these titles so? Is it simply nostalgia? Some of my earliest memories include playing video games on my dad's NES. One title that always stuck out to me was The Legend of Zelda. To my young mind, it probably had more to do with the slick golden cartridge than anything else, but though I didn't really get how to play, I did enjoy swinging that sweet, sweet sword-gun.
Press the fast forward button on your VCR and set the clock to the 90s, when the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was king. When I got The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, memories of that older game came flooding back, and I knew this would be the start of a whole new era for me.
I'm pretty biased while reviewing certain games, but I'd have to say I'm especially biased with Yoshi's Island. You see, Yoshi's Island was the first SNES game I played, at the tender age of five years old. My family was pretty late in the game (heh) when it came to the SNES; we were a Sega Genesis family throughout the early-mid 90's. My dad bought a SNES in 1997, so we ended up the the SNS-101 model (which I still use as my main SNES to this day, screw the haters), and I suspect he thought it was a new console... but I'm not entirely sure. Later that year, or perhaps early the next year, we got a Sony Playstation. If you read the linked Wiki article, you'd know that Yoshi's Island was one of the pack-ins, and was indeed the one we got with it.
Firstly, it must be stated that Yoshi's Island is pretty divergent from the Mario titles that came before it, in many ways:
Happy 4th of July, everyone! To celebrate, here's some cool bit of retro related news. First, in the event that you don't already know this, I'll give a little background information to help you understand the context behind this story: around 25 years ago, Nintendo and Sony entered into a partnership to create a CD capable console, but those plans fell through and the thing never saw commercial release. There were, however, a number of prototypes produced. One of those prototypes has alleged
Like a lot of people here in the US, I missed out on the Sega Saturn when it was still in production. As a kid, I always wondered what games I was missing out on, since we had a PlayStation. I was a huge fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games on Sega Genesis, and seeing how the Saturn was also a Sega console, I thought I was missing out on some cool Sonic games. Turns out that, well, I really wasn't. The only game I really missed out for years was Sonic Jam, which was just a compilation of the original Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog titles, with a small 3D level to explore thrown in. (Interestingly, I've heard that this 3D level was the result of a game Sonic Team was working on, that eventually became Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.) The only other two Sonic games for Saturn I played on PC; Sonic 3D Blast and, of course, Sonic R.
I have interesting history with the Spyro series. My first exposure to it was the demo of the first game included with Crash Bandicoot: Warped, its inclusion owed to the fact that Naughty Dog and Insomniac had a working relationship. Years later I found myself in a video rental store picking out a game to rent. Spyro 2 caught my eye, and I rented it, played it, and really enjoyed it. Spyro 2 is definitely my favorite of the series, and the one I would recommend overall. However, recently I saw a 100% speed-run race of the original Spyro the Dragon, so I was reminded that I have never completed any of the Spyro games to 100% completion. Inspired, I chose to finish the original.
I know you've read the title already, and I know you (if you're a gamer at all) already have a flurry of thoughts rushing into your head about Metal Gear Solid. There have been many installments of the Metal Gear franchise since 1998's Metal Gear Solid. I want you to try to forget all that. Forget all the lore the sequels have brought into the series. Forget the remake on the Nintendo Gamecube. Forget about the upcoming MGSV. Heck, maybe even forget about the original Metal Gear MSX games (we sure didn't know about them here in America in 1998). Let's start fresh again, and take a look at a PlayStation classic.
So it looks like Nintendo WFC is still around, albeit in a limited and unofficial fashion. A group of intrepid Nintendo fans have set up a server that responds to many WFC requests, and is allowing some games to still go online. The system works by redirecting traffic from Nintendo's now defunct servers to a homebrew one set up by GitHub user Polaris, and handles matchmaking, online chat, and many
I absolutely love the Doom games, it's a close contender for my favorite game series. I love to get more Doom whenever I can, and thanks to all the mods and addons constantly being created that's never a problem. The guys at id Software felt the same way, they wanted more Doom even as they were making it. This is why they were very open to the modding community, and very open to licensing their engine to other companies. Midway handled the console ports of Doom to the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. However, when it came to the Nintendo 64 they decided to not just port the game and go with something more original. Originally titled Absolution, they went with the much less cool name of Doom 64.
Update August 2016: The download link was broken, so that's been fixed. I have also added instructions down below.
One of the things that always irked me about Wolfenstein 3D is that its control scheme is a little too oldschool. The game features what I'd call 'strafe mode', instead of dedicated strafe keys, so you can't really play it like you would any other FPS. So online I found there's a top-notch port of Wolfenstein 3D to windows called Wolf4SDL. I grabbed the source code, made it so your left/right keys always make you strafe, and made it so the mouse doesn't move you forward/black, and boom, now I can actually play Wolf3D!
Download it here. Extract this zip into your Wolf3D folder. If you don't have Wolf3D, just go get the shareware version. Source code can be found here. This will not work with Spear of Destiny.
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