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Well here is the second of the NEW Nick and Steve's Game Hunt - eBay series. AND I just got a package in the Mail from another eBay so instead of 2 Blogs you get THREE! Maybe more tomorrow. Hope you all liked the view of the TV Tuner. It's a pretty cool item. Now this next blog is about the good old Nintendo Player's Guides. NO not Nintendo Power but YES you could get them through Nintendo Power. These cool guides that were released had many different objectives like walkthroughs, descriptions and maps!!! Well we bought a few on eBay and before you know it we have almost a complete collection, except missing a few rare ones. These magazines you could only get through sending in mail order card packaged in NES released games or through Nintendo Power. There are a few pretty rare Player's Guides out there like Earthbound or Chrono Trigger. But in this lot my brother bought he received them from a lady who was selling women's shoes!!! Yes that is correct ha. Well he obtained a couple of rare ones!!! Final Fantasy III and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Original Game Boy. The other two guides we now have two copies of the Game Boy one which is about a good amount of Game Boy Games that have walkthroughs, hints and a game directory. The other double we have is the Top Secret Passwords guide which entails codes for NES, Game Boy and SNES. Well if you have any questions you know where to find me. Here are the pictures enjoy!
Picture 1 - All of the Guides
Picture 2 - Final Fantasy III!!!
Picture 3 - Link's Awakening
Picture 4 - Top Secret Passwords
Picture 5 - Game Boy
To the Administrators - I would like to help out and maybe start on a database for strategy guides like these and others as well. I have a huge collection I could submit and others of course can start submitting there's as well.
What's this? A new Treasure Hunt Chronicles? It feels like its been ages since I last posted one of these. Last year was a little mixed for me, I had the single largest haul of my life (and most likely will never get so many games at once ever again) but I only had eight Treasure Hunt Chronicle posts. I had to quit treasure hunting early last year due to a huge research project and school in general sucking up all my time. But that's all done, and I'll hopefully be able to get back into garage saling full time. I'll be graduating in the Spring, and working an internship until then, so I'll most likely be limited to Saturdays only for garage saling from now, instead of any day there is a garage sale, so I'll have to work extra hard on the days that I do get to go saling.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2011 - #1
Here we have a perfect postmodern product, the kind of thing that made Baudrillard's head spin and which will make future generations look back on our culture with painful embarrassment. This is a game based on a movie that is based on a game that is a sequel. The inspiration for this game, Street Fighter II, was a beautiful and innovative arcade giant. The film, on the other hand, was a widely panned and campy take on everything that made the game interesting. Where would the game stand? Would it improve on the lowly film, or would it drag the Street Fighter name further down?
It would be easy to understand if early adopters for game consoles were leery of the Street Fighter name, as the previous launch title in the series largely failed to deliver the goods. Nonetheless, on the day the PS1 launched in September 1995, early adopters who were interested in bringing home a fighting game (at a time when fighting games were still all the rage in the arcade) were presented with a choice of two titles: the new IP Battle Arena Toshinden providing a 3D graphics engine or the newest release in the wildly successful Street Fighter series: Street Fighter: The Movie. Neither had seen an arcade release (although a different SF:TM game was released in arcades a few months earlier), so the new buyer had to rely on word of mouth, what they could learn from their past experiences, and what they discern from the boxes themselves.
So, if you were standing at a Babbage's or EB on that fateful day in September of 1995 with the two fighting games in front of you, what did you see? For one, you saw Van Damme's giant fucking head:
Giant.
On Street Fighter: The Movie you also saw a few additional important pieces of information on the cover. You saw the boast of "DIGITIZED GRAPHICS FROM THE HIT MOVIE!" You saw two names that were giants in the arcade industry in Capcom and Akklaim. Turning the box over, you saw that the back cover was filled with content: five in game screen shots, 14 pictures of the digitized fighters ("including Jean Claude Van Damme!"), and no less than 15 exclamation marks. The whole thing appears to be a beautiful and/or unholy marriage of Mortal Kombat graphics, Street Fighter mechanics, and celebrity worship. By contrast, on the Battle Arena Toshinden cover you see some awkwardly drawn, generic looking Japanese fighting characters, a handful of less than flattering screenshots of the game, and a description that does its best to make the launch title sound like the most generic fighting game of the era (and only seven exclamation marks). So, if you had to go on the box art in front of you on launch day, you probably made a decision that you would come to regret: you probably took home Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.
As a launch title, Street Fighter: The Movie is notable for several reasons:
It offered plenty of FMV. It is important to remember that the PlayStation launched only a short time after FMV was the newest innovation in gaming, and if there's one thing Street Fighter: The Movie had going for it, it was copious amounts of FMV, both from the film and original to the game itself. This is especially prominent in the main story mode of the game in which you must play as Guile (Van Damme) and beat opponents on your way to M. Bison and the most obscenely gut-punching end game music video you've seen today:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/LRFU5diCD8M&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/LRFU5diCD8M&rel=0</a>]]>
Interesting trivia? This is actually the second music video affiliated with Street Fighter: The Movie. The other? A video starring Street Fighter: The Movie actors, MC Hammer, and Deion Fucking Sanders . Really. (CAUTION: the gut punch is even stronger from this video, as it manages to distill almost everything horrible about pop culture in 1994 into its purest form.)
"Hey! Kylie Minogue is in my PlayStation!"
It looked good when paused. Ok, this is debatable, but the game does feature passable digital capture work for the main characters, close approximations of the movie settings as backgrounds, and reasonable effects for at least some of the various special moves. If you were used to playing stuff like the Genesis port of Primal Rage or the SNES version of Mortal Kombat 3, then the look of the game (while paused) was quite impressive and showed off some of the potential of the PlayStation as a system. When you unpaused, however...
The game was jerky, stuttered frequently, and controlled horribly. A good fighting game must be fluid, and Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game's biggest flaw is that it is not a fun fighter. It is randomly fast or slow, it isn't especially good at recognizing inputs for special moves, and the action of pressing a button isn't quite 1:1 with the movement on the screen, as it must be. Even if you really liked Street Fighter: The Movie or really liked Capcom games, this title managed to kick you in the balls either way. Built on the SSF2T engine, control shouldn't have been a problem (in theory). I guess when you introduce motion-captured graphics into a 2D engine, problems result.
This picture of pissy Bison is courtesy of the excellent write up on the film and games @ RetroJunk!!!
The game didn't end the PlayStation's life immediately. Bad launch games can hurt a system's pedigree from the start, and by the time the PlayStation came along the Saturn had already built an impressive roster of 2D and 3D fighting games (including its own launch title: Virtua Fighter). The fact that a rushed, buggy, misguided game like Street Fighter: The Movie didn't kill the system's chances with fighting game fans is probably due to the fact that it had already been released on the Saturn and, presumably, been as widely panned as the film itself. Maybe good-hearted Babbage's employees guided new PlayStation owners towards the superior Battle Arena Toshinden, maybe they urged them to wait for the upcoming Street Fighter Alpha (released about three months later), or perhaps they suggested that proof of the PS1's arcade chops could be found in games like Ridge Racer instead.
Street Fighter: The Movie must be regarded as one of the worst launch games for any system ever, and certainly the worst fighting game available for any launch. As Van Damme's Guile asked Raul Julia's Bison in the film based on the game: "What happened to the purity of unarmed combat?!!!!"
Hey blog readers! So I checked out the Bulletstorm demo the other day. After completing the demo and watching the video at the end, I immediately logged onto Gamestop.com and pre-ordered my copy for PS3 (I would have done PC, but I don't have really any friends that play PC games online).
At any rate this game is a whole lotta fun before you even get into the really fun stuff. I don't know about you all, but I am very excited about this game, and can't wait for it to arrive at my front door.
A new twist on an old favorite to be released in the first quarter of 2011 for PC, XBox 360, and PS3.
http://news.bigdownload.c...that-shows-art-direction/
The original Yars' Revenge for the Atari 2600
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1frWskIr5tU&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/1frWskIr5tU&rel=0</a>]]>
**video courtesy of Highretrogamelord89
Just a quick plug for http://Racketboy.com, as the recently published Game Boy 101 article was co-authored by myself. I've been meaning to mention it here since it went up in January, but kept forgetting. Anyway if you want to kill some time, it's a fairly extensive overview of the original Game Boy's history and was also written by RFGen-blogger Ack, who keeps an awesome (though not updated often enough) horror blog on this very site.
Link: http://www.racketboy.com/...01-a-beginners-guide.html
TAPPER
Specs:
Game: Tapper
Year: 1984
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Bally-Midway Manufacturing Co., Inc.
Designer(s): Marvin Glass
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 6 = rare+
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 - 2 (turn based)
Average Cost: currently, usually $10 - $30 loose, depending on condition
Also Available On: Arcade cabinet, Atari 8-bit, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, PC, Mobile phone, Xbox 360 (XBLA); also released in the compilation "Midway Arcade Treasures" for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and the PC.
Tagline/Description:
"Side-splitting, soda-flinging laughs and spills!
The Official Home Version of Bally/Midway's Arcade Sensation.
Five belly-busting screens of Soda Fountain Fun, including:
-- Four mad-capped barrooms of soda-starved, clamoring cowboys, sports fans, punks, and space creatures.
-- Plus a head-spinning Soda Bandit Bonus Round
Awesome color-packed action graphics.
Just try to keep your cool as hot-headed, crazy customers blitz your bar for another cold one."
In Tapper, you control a beer tapper (bartender) and have to serve beer to demanding customers. Customers shuffle up the four bars toward your beer taps and you must slide them drinks in order to keep them satisfied and make them go away. You start out with 5 lives and these lives are lost as follows: (1) if a bar patron reaches the end of the bar without receiving their beer, (2) if you slide an extra beer when there is no customer and accidentally spill beer needlessly, and (3) if a patron throws you back an empty mug and you fail to catch it. You can score additional points by competing in a bonus round between every few stages. In these bonus rounds, a masked bandit creeps into the bar and shakes up all but one, of six available cans. The cans then flip around in a shell-game fashion and you must keep your eye on the one that was not shaken. You then select the can you deem undisturbed and the bartender opens it; if you are correct, you are awarded bonus points, if you are wrong, the tapper receives a heady bath.
Tapper was originally a coin-op machine marketed in conjunction with Budweiser and intended to be sold only to bars; many of the cabinets were designed to look like bars with a brass rail footrest and drink holders. The controller was designed to look like the tap handles on a real keg (see photos below). It's also rumored that digitized belches were also recorded, but never used. In order to broaden their target market (and to not lure the kiddies toward the "sauce"), Bally/Midway created coin-op cabinets and tabletops known as Root Beer Tapper. The Atari 2600 version is simply called Tapper, which apparently leaves it up to the consumer, or pre-video game advisory warning parents, to determine which frothy beverage bar patrons are actually chugging in game. However, in between clearing a few stages there is a bonus stage, brought to you courtesy of your good friends at Mountain Dew. It's not clear whether or not Tapper on the 2600 was trying to "C.I.A." by employing the soda company's logo, but by doing so, the ad's presence resulted in one of the earliest examples of marketing within a video game.
 
Tapper is a great game and probably one of the best ports to the Atari 2600. Not only is the concept original and the gameplay simple and attractive, but the sound effects and music (yes, actual music on a 2600 game) are wild west saloon-like and second to none. The graphics are as good as they can be due to the limitations of the system and all characters and settings are well defined and recognizable. My only real knock on this game is the controls. You use the joystick to move the tapper up and down, while using the orange button to fire off brewskies. Like many other 2600 games, Tapper is hampered by the rough and often rigorous directional tapping of the joystick. Because the action is so fast paced, and gets even quicker as you progress through multiple stages, the 2600 joystick cannot keep up and it often results in a few misfired mugs. One would do well in achieving higher scores by obtaining a European CX78 controller and popping this game into the ole 7800.
Even though the controls can be a bit sticky, Tapper is still one of the best games for the 2600. Though the rarity and price point make it a harder game to come by, you can easily snag a loose copy at a good deal with a last minute, no reserve auction bid. No matter what price you pay due to condition or completeness, Tapper will be one of those games that you will be proud to own.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/_5jCputTLFs&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/_5jCputTLFs&rel=0</a>]]>
**video courtesy of Hairman9252
RATINGS (on a scale of 1-4: 4 being the highest):
Controls: 2
Graphics: 4
Sound Effects/Music: 4
Concept: 4
Replay Value: 3
Cart/Box Art: 4
Overall Score: 3.50
As many of you know, I typically blog about 2600 games, but my other passion is collecting for the Vectrex. For those of you who are also enthusiasts, I just wanted to send out some updates regarding the Vectrex community for anyone who might be interested.
John Dondzila is still going strong and creating some great games for the Vectrex at:
http://www.classicgamecreations.com/
Fury Unlimited is still putting out a few good homebrews:
http://www.furyunlimited.com/_sgg/f10000.htm
Vectrexians (a Galaxian clone) is now available for order and a few other homebrews are currently in development. Vectrexians comes with a box and an overlay:
http://www.kristofsnewvectrexgames.comli.com/
It appears that the RecycledGamer is putting together some more homebrew lightpens for sale (see post dated 1/26/2011). AtariAge members were picking them up earlier for only $35!!!! A considerable discount considering the original pens sell for a few hundred. A buddy and I are currently working on creating some light pens just for fun, but they will be no where near the quality of these. Stay tuned: http://www.atariage.com/f...d05dea8716720b5e30303702f
We have a new episode out with our first interview. This is another first for us, both on our delivery and for the recording itself. Please let us know if you had any issues actually hearing anything as well as any topic suggestions, interview suggestions, or anything else you want us to talk about in the locations below.
The Episode:
- 0:00: Intro
- 0:57: ReddMcKnight Interview
- 7:39: What's New on Channel 3?
- 8:32: Gaming News
- 26:52: Gaming Shoutout!/I'm Sorry...
- 36:50: Top 5
- 37:40: Outro
You can comment in the forums, comment in this blog post, e-mail us, and even call us. We hope to be able to take your quick questions over any subject via e-mail at podcast@rfgeneration.com. You can also call us and leave a message! We can play your question or comment in the episode and we'll even respond to it! That number is (318) RFG-TIP5 or (318) 734-8475.
Here is the forum thread to comment: http://www.rfgeneration.c...m/index.php?topic=10730.0
The podcast, as usual, can be found and subscribed at http://rfgeneration.podomatic.com as well as in iTunes!
The Together Retro game club at http://Racketboy.com spent January playing through Riviera: The Promised Land, which gave me an excuse to finally put some serious time into the GBA version which had been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for far too long. First: a bit of history. Riviera is the first title in a five-game series collectively referred to as Dept. Heaven. So far only the second (Yggdra Union) and fourth (Knights In The Nightmare) entries in the series have been released alongside this one.
Riviera was developed by Sting Entertainment, who are well-known for creating interesting mash-ups of genres, especially within the Dept. Heaven games. Although it's easiest to refer to Riviera as an RPG, there's actually a lot of other elements that are also present from other genres. The game also plays against the confines of the stereotypical RPG conventions. The biggest difference is that there is very little flexibility to the progression of the story. The plot is extremely linear, and feels a bit closer to a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure than a Final Fantasy. Though in a sense there's a certain simplicity to Riviera that's akin to the infamous SNES release Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest. Though whereas Mystic Quest's goal in being basic was to act as a gateway to more complicated RPG's, Riviera tends to use restrictions to focus on really thinking ahead. For instance you can bring three characters into battle, but you can only bring four items including weapons. If you want to bring a healing item or something other than a weapon, then an option may be to have two characters learn to use the same weapon, though all items including weapons have a limited number of uses. These sort of gameplay restrictions can be either awesomely challenging or extremely frustrating, depending on which camp you're in.
(Note: some content after the jump may be considered slightly NSFW. You've been warned.)
Continue reading Riviera: The Promised Land
It's been a couple of weeks since my last big post. Some of you may be wondering why the lull. Well there's lots to talk about, so I've decided to just jam it all into one big, unstructured post. So let's begin with a post-Holiday story. Being a "gamer," I received a fair share of gift-cards to video game stores for Christmas. And understandably. I don't expect family members to keep track of my constantly in-flux collection. So the day after New Year's my wife and I went out from store to store using up various gift cards (and "mad money" from Grandma) that we received. Here's where the story takes an interesting turn. Most of the gift cards that I received were for GameStop. I went to four of them in a single day only to find that their GBA sections were almost gone. The games they did I have, I already owned. And then I'd start to notice things out of the corner of my eye. And by "things" I mean Playstation 2 games that I wouldn't mind playing.
Let me back up for a minute here. Many of you know me as "the Game Boy guy," and that's certainly understandable. I mean look at the name of my blog, right? But here's the thing: I've had a long history of various systems beginning with the Commodore 64. And believe it or not, when the Playstation launched, it was actually the first console I ever bought with my own money. I had to put it on layaway and pay it off with bits of allowance over a period of months. When I finally got the damn thing, I couldn't even afford a game for quite some time, so I had to settle for the demo disc that came with it. But those demos of Jumping Flash and Battle Arena Toshinden kept me busy. And I really did love that thing.
And though I've always been a bit of a Nintendo Fanboy, I skipped over the N64 altogether. A single friend of mine owned one, and though I was impressed with Mario Kart 64, nothing else really appealed to me the same way that Resident Evil, Suikoden, RPG Maker or the Tekken series did. In fact, the PS1 was awesome enough to me to make me purchase a Playstation 2 at launch as well. This is the last console that I bought at launch to date!
However sometime in 2008 I realized that I just had way too many video games for a married man living in a small apartment. I knew I had to condense. It made sense to focus on a single collection. And thus the GameCube with Game Boy Player made the most sense to me at the time. Though it's true that the PS2 (and it's PS1 backwards compatibility) offers a huge library of games, I decided to focus on the GB/GBC/GBA library based mostly on a handful of series. To be honest, the biggest draw for me was that Zelda didn't exist in Sony's world (unless you count Dark Cloud). So I sold my PS2 along with my PSP and all the games I had for each.
In the time since I've certainly become a bit of an expert on the Game Boy's library. And rightly so, as I've spent enough time with it. But I've also become a far more educated gamer as well. I've spent countless hours reading the amazing wealth of information over at http://HardCoreGaming101.net, http://GameSpite.net and their ilk. I've discovered a new fondness for entire genres (Shmups!) and publishers (Atlus!) and well, I just know a lot more now. It occurred to me that it was time to re-buy my once beloved PS2 and PSP. And so I spent those gift cards.
Now many of you know that I'm a very regular poster in the forums at http://RacketBoy.com. And as I started building up my old PS1, PS2 and PSP libraries all over again, along with new additions, I felt the need to discuss this blog over there. I guess I was looking for permission to expand the blog's horizon. And though I got lots of feedback (some begging I keep it GB-only, others wishing me luck), ultimately I have to go with my gut feeling. And my gut feeling is that this blog is my blog. And my blog will be at it's best when I'm writing about whatever I'm excited about right this very second. So that's what I'm planning on doing, folks. (If you're really bored, you can read the whole soul-searching thread here: http://www.racketboy.com/...mp;st=0&sk=t&sd=a)
My main reason for wanting a PS2 again was to tap into the rather rich library of (both domestic and import) PS1 and PS2 shmups out there. So I picked up a used slim model, and a Hori stick made to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Tekken. A handful of trades yielded me such entries as the US version of Castle Of Shikigami (known as Mobile Light Force II here), along with the second Shikigami, Gradius III & IV, R-Types, Sol Divide, Gekioh Shooting King, and many others. But probably my biggest delight thus far has been Einhander, the infamous Square developed shmup that has proven to be even better than I've heard.
Truth be told I've gone on a pretty serious binge over the past month. Numerous retro collections and fighting games (Darkstalkers 3!) and everything else in between. To put it mildly, I am really enjoying getting back into collecting PS1 and PS2 games again. It has a ton of "hardcore" games that I'm loving attempting to track down, and on the casual front my Celtics are 4-0 in NBA 2K9 and my wife and I are hopefully on our way to a championship in Jeopardy.
Which meant buying another PSP was the next rational step. To be honest I've loved the PSP since it was released. Of course back when I owned one, there weren't as many must-own titles that I knew about. When I first had an original "fat" model PSP, it was mostly used as an MP3-player and retro-emulator to be completely honest. Of course now I'm far more interested in imports and more interesting releases, such as the absolutely amazing Half-Minute Hero which is pretty much blowing my mind right now.
And though I'm not an advocate of piracy by any means (seriously, I hate the Johnny Depp movies even), I can't ignore that the PSP homebrew scene is among the best. There's an absolutely wonderful port of the indie hit Cave Story for the PSP. And the solid Atari 2600 emulator means that I could finally play Halo 2600, which turned out to be one of the finest 2600 games I ever played. It was addicting, and well perfect, forcing me to beat it as quickly as I could.
So there you have it, dear readers. The end of the beginning. Or whatever it is. Of course I'm not abandoning Game Boy coverage, but I am intending to let other stuff in. I hope you all stick around to see where things go from here. Hopefully some of you are just as excited as I am.
Hey everyone these are some basic pictures of our collection as of today enjoy. Keep in mind not everything is shown and if you have any questions just PM me.
Hey RF Generation Users! And Newcomers! Sorry been a while since a blog and I promise an RPG one but this one is pretty interesting on its own and it's a Game Hunt! Okay my partner in crime my brother went and did a little eBay shopping. The stuff he bought and sorry no pictures for the earlier items this is a blog about the "pirate carts" here in a bit. Started off with Mega Man x4 on the Sega Saturn for $20.00. Second item bought was Arc The Lad Collection on PS1 complete in MINT Condition!!! And for only $44.00!!! Unbelievable!! Then he bought some other little items here and there. Big ONE Lufia: The Legend Returns on Game Boy Color BRAND NEW NEVER BEEN OPENED!!!! It is selling for new on eBay for $150 or higher and he got it for $60.00!!! What a steal haha. Anyways...there were a few more things but he was on a Game Boy & Game Boy Color binge and in one lot he decided to buy a bunch of games for like $22.00. The Lot came with a few games in and a few games out of their boxes nothing out of the ordinary but the main reason he wanted the lot is because it had 32 and 36 in 1 Game Boy carts. Well we get the stuff in the mail and know and behold we get a 230 in 1 cart as well no label on it just a blank cartridge.
So this past couple of months have been great buying and we will be buying more in the coming months. When I get some money from school I will be going on a shopping binge for old school and pre-order Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Special Edition!! Well our next blog will be about RPG's and that is were the picture of Lufia will come in.
Here we go folks the pictures of the might "pirate carts".
Picture 1: The 36-In-1 In Box Front (There is no instructions only the game cart and the box)
Picture 2: The 36-In-1 In Box Back
Picture 3: The 32-In-1 In Box Front
Picture 4: The 32-In-1 Box Back
Picture 5: The 230-In-1 Cart
Picture 6: All 3 Pirate Carts
Well I hope you all enjoyed these little treasures. Keep an eye out for more blogs. Hope to make the main page someday.
So, you want to hear a Story, eh? One about Stealth, Deception, Guns, Elves, Orcs, and a Cyber Matrix? Then you've come to the right place. Where to begin...
Shadowrun was developed and published by FASA Corporation from 1989 until early 2001, when FASA closed its doors and the property was transferred to WizKids, which was founded by people from FASA. It started as a Tabletop RPG.
The Shadowrun world is cross-genre, incorporating elements of both cyberpunk and urban fantasy. Unlike in a purely cyberpunk game, in the Shadowrun world, magic returns in 2011. Among other things, this causes humankind to split into subtypes, also known as metatypes. Some of these metatypes take the form of common fantasy races. Likewise, some animals have turned into familiar monsters of past fantasy and lore and both monsters and human magicians have regained magical powers. By the second half of the 21st century, in the time the game is set, these events are accepted as commonplace. Man, machine, and magic exist in a world where the amazing is among the most common and technology has entered into every facet of human (and metahuman) life.
There's more to Shadowrun though. It also had 4 Video Game releases, each one being developed by a different company:
1993 Shadowrun (Beam Software, SNES)
1994 Shadowrun (BlueSky Software, Genesis/Mega Drive)
1996 Shadowrun (Group SNE, Sega/Mega CD)
2007 Shadowrun (FASA Interactive, PC and Xbox 360)
Each game, being developed by different companies, had very different Gameplay, with the Genesis Version being cited as being closest to the original Tabletop RPG. It's also my personal favorite. Anyway, here's a brief synopsis for each game.
The first Shadowrun Game was released for the SNES, and it...it wasn't very good, at least not in my opinion. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. It felt like I should be playing with a SNES Mouse, as opposed to a controller. I couldn't even get past the beginning. It does however, have the honor of being the first Shadowrun Video Game, so I guess that's something...maybe.
Now we're talking! This is my favorite game in the series, and for good reason! As I mentioned before, this one is the most faithful to the Tabletop RPG, and it's just plain fun to play! I can't say enough good things about this game! I wish it hadn't ended! Plenty of sidequests, a cool main quest, some good gameplay variety, and then some! I would rant on, but it would take forever, so I won't.
Shadowrun for the Se...Mega CD. Why the Mega CD? Because it was only released in Japan. I know absolutely NOTHING about this game, nor could I find any screenshots for it. Sorry about that.
Several years after the release of the Mega CD Version of Shadowrun, it returned to the Video Game world for one more round, this time as an FPS. For whatever reason, many people absolutely hate this game, but I thought it was pretty cool myself, and it's not like it's unfun. Thanks to it's unfair judgement though, it was the last Video Game in the series. Stupid critics. They probably didn't play the game for 5 Minutes before casting judgement on it.
So, what happened to the Shadowrun Tabletop RPG? As far as I know, it's been struggling for sales lately. I doubt it's even being made anymore, which is pretty sad. There was also supposed to be another Shadowrun Video Game in the 90s, but it was cancelled.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
SPECS:
Game: Space Cavern
Year: 1981
Publisher: Apollo, Inc.
Developer: Apollo, Inc.
Designer: Dan Oliver
Rarity (according to AtariAge): 3 = scarce
Controls: Joystick
Number of Players: 1 -2 (turn-based)
Average Cost: approx $1 - $5 loose
Also Available On: exclusive to the Atari 2600
Tagline/Description: "You command an intergalactic starcruiser that has landed on a mysterious planet riddled with smokey caverns and inhabited by savage Electrosauri whose horns generate deadly electro-molecular charges. The Elecrosauri stalk you, their horns crackling and sizzling. If even one blast of energy strikes you, your skeleton will glow as you disintegrate. Warning: Beware the shaggy marsupods [last sentence added for blue cartridge version only]."
Space Cavern is a very simple space shooter created by Apollo Games. Apollo only officially released 10 games for the 2600, which does not include three (3) unreleased prototypes and an original (and very rare) version of Shark Attack called Lochjaw, that was removed early on from the shelves due to a lawsuit claiming that it's title was too similar to the movie "Jaws." Two versions of Space Cavern exist, a red box/cartridge and a blue box/cartridge. Neither version is more rare than the other, the blue version was released by Apollo later only as a means of cutting costs by using a simpler and more cost-effective color palate.
Unlike the more popular Atari space shooters, in Space Cavern, you do not control a ship fending off enemy starships in outer space, but instead, command laser wielding astronauts who have crash landed on an alien planet. Sounds cool right? Well, that's certainly the draw. Apollo was masterful in their marketing; if you don't believe me, take a look at the cover art for such super lackluster games as Lost Luggage, Infiltrate, or Final Approach (heck yeah a game about landing planes). I mean what early 80's video game playing kid wouldn't want to buy Space Cavern after seeing it in the store? Badass cover art - check! Cool description - check! Being hit by deadly "electro-molecular charges" and disintegrating - I don't even know what the hell those are, but DOUBLE CHECK!!!! The reality is that Space Cavern isn't all that great, but for an Atari fiend like me, it isn't all that bad either.
(Apparently someone took out their frustrations for being duped by this game.)
There are three (3) enemies that commonly fill the sky of Space Cavern and they are collectively called Electrosauri; however in my adolescence, they were affectionately named: egg beaters, toilets, and scissors -- I'll let you figure out which enemies fit these descriptions. By pressing the orange button, your astronaut fires his laser into the sky and is awarded 115 points (wow, random) for each Electrosauri he/she shoots down. These particular enemies are fairly colorful and typically either bounce in an up and down pattern or diagonally across the screen. When you zap one, they change to a pale blue and actually fall from the sky, which is pretty creative. After 20,000 points, smaller and much harder to hit versions of Electrosauri appear in the sky; at each 20,000 points you are also awarded an extra life.
The only other enemy in the game is the Marsupod (200 points each), which are dull gray in color and come out of the caves from the left and right corners of the screen. Since the orange button only allows you to fire into the sky, your must press the joystick up or down (up = left: down = right) to fire at and dispense with Marsupods - pushing the orange button to fire left to right is not necessary. Though you'll fire the wrong way several times, recovery time from firing is quick and becomes second nature after continued play.
There are 48 variations of gameplay, which can be set to adjust the number of participants, the number of Electrosauri that appear in the sky at one time (4 max), the presence of Marsupods, the random angles of enemy lasers, and the difficulty (i.e. speed of the enemies).
Space Cavern is tough to review, since I get a bit nostalgic when returning to play it (**see eggbeater, toilet, scissor discussion above). The controls are perfect for the 2600 system, since you only use the four (4) main directional positions on the joystick and the fire button. The sound effects are pretty good: shooting down an Electrosauri sounds like R2-D2 speaking in tongues and blasting a Marsupod is rather blunt and effective. There is really nothing that bad about this game, other than the replay value. Let's face it, there's not a whole lot going on in this game, and after about three to four rounds, you'll probably want to put it away if you are playing it alone. As far as Apollo releases are concerned, I'd put Space Cavern at the top with the Pac-Man clone, Shark Attack. If you're a serious collector, or just a casual 2600 gamer, the small price tag makes Space Cavern worth picking up.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/uwOn_h-_Pow&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/uwOn_h-_Pow&rel=0</a>]]>
**video courtesy of Highretrogamelord89 (this video does not represent the more difficult setting which includes Marsupods) **
RATINGS (on a scale of 1-4: 4 being the highest):
Controls: 4
Graphics: 2
Sound Effects/Music: 2
Concept: 3
Replay Value: 2
Cart/Box Art: 4
Overall Score: 2.83
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