(Hums theme to Xevious). Xevious. A shoot 'em up game developed by Namco. I still have no clue as to what exactly the player is suppose to do other than destroy everything. As well it is unclear whether the game actually has a purpose or if the player is locked in an endurance mode lasting as long as they can. I never figured it out. But I believe I read somewhere that Xevious has 8 rounds.
Xevious is a vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game. The player gets no power ups and is equipped with a t
Once a year one of the largest gaming events sets the stage of what's to come. And XBOX has always put on a good showing with exclusives, releases of popular game franchises, XBOX firsts and much more. This year the concept behind XBOX's E3 show seems to be more about finally bridging the gap between console and PC gamers. But more on that later. Here are the highlights I found most interesting ... so far.
Sega is bringing one of the most popular RPG franchises of all time to the X
While going through some ST game images I came across the words "Vroom". No explanation. I have already seen some weird games on the ST so far so why not. Couldn't be any worse than some I've tried so far, right? In goes a blank disk, on it goes Vroom which I assumed was some sort of racing game with motorcycles. Disk done and to the ST I go. Insert disk, power on.
Once I saw the title screen and heard the music my spidey senses started going off. What did I just feed my ST? Where di
I remember answering a question asking that if I was stranded on an island what game system would I wish was with me. Or something like that. I had some figuring to do as to what systems were my favorites and also had games I could play that I wouldn't get bored with or spend too much time on if power was limited. I had a few other factors to consider as well such as power requirements and how it connected to a screen. All of that played an important role to my final decision.
The overal
That is the question. I received a NES Classic Mini which makes it the second one in my collection. It has a controller and that’s it. No box or anything. My other one remains little used and stays in its box with all original packaging material.
I have been debating whether or not to mod the thing by adding more games to it. I don’t know how many different ways there are to mod it, if it’s an easy process or more trouble than it’s worth. But it would be nice to see the games I grew up
I probably know what you are thinking. Let me try to guess. It's probably the first online multiplayer video game. It's most likely on a computer of some sort. It was either on disc, disk, or placed in an obscure place making it hard for people to find. Am I close? To answer those: no, no, and no. And this game might be closer than you realize.
Long story short my nephew and I decided to play a game together. The problem was that he wanted to play split a screen on XBOX. I wanted t
Tonight I thought I would research applications in attempts of finding anything to allow writing programs for the Atari ST. I do enjoy writing small programs every now and then. I turned to some magazines to see what turned up before having to turn to Google. Doing a Google searched turned up a recommendation for an app called Tempus. The only one I have on hand is version 1.10 but there are other versions out there.
What grab my interest right off the bat were the file types it support
Strapped inside the cockpit of your starship, looking out into space, you see a star moving. After a few seconds of watching, the star turns into an enemy Basestar...and it has sent out its best starfighters to destroy you. Red alarms start to go off as your radar shows the enemy attempting to out flank you. An enemy starfighter appears right in your line of sight. You take the shot by firing your photon torpedoes. A direct hit!! Somehow you managed to miss the fire of another starfighter, which
Oh man. Where to start? I reckon I should start at the beginning. Star Raiders, as any Atari gamer would know, is the iconic first-person space action adventure game published by Atari in 1979 on their Atari 8-bit home computers and later porting it over to the 5200 and 2600 game consoles. It is the game that defined that genre which others would follow. Star Raiders II (the published one and the one that did not get released) took the basics and attempted to improve on them. Solaris for t
I thought about making this just a standard forum post but decided instead to make it a blog post. This way I have a document on my findings while learning more about the ST. And now...the rest of the story (I miss Paul Harvey).
I was doing research trying to find out if Konami actually went through with releasing some games on the ST computers. One issue of ST Action mentioned it but the next issue that was to continue the story was missing. My research turned up something more and I l
I remember being four years old and being at the bowling alley with my Mother and discovering Space Invaders for the first time. Years later when the 2600 made its way to our local Wal-Mart, and even had a demo unit set up, I discovered that I could play that game at home. I asked for that Atari machine and that game for a few Christmases and birthdays but never did get it. I did end up with an Atari by 1982 but it wasn't the 2600.
Space Invaders was the sole reason why I wanted a 2600,
Before I get too far along, I had previously reviewed this game on this website here. So if you would like to read that first for a memory refresh, or if you haven't read it yet, the link to it is provided. Because this review is revisiting the game and adding to that review. Let's see how well Solaris still stands after a few months.
Without repeating myself too much, Solaris was an attempt at creating a Star Raiders-like title for the Atari 2600. Instead of a first-person flying perspectiv
What to write about? I know I want to write about the 2600 but I just don't know where to begin. Do I talk more about the iconic woody console or the Junior model? I don't have much to say about controllers because it's either paddle, driving, keypad, or more joystick designs than anyone could fathom. Games? Do I talk more about games that I have managed to pick up since my last post? I might have to think on this a bit more. While I'm thinking...
As I sit here writing this there is
There was a time when buying a new game required using the packaging material to grab the consumer's attention. There usually was no limit to how far a software company would go to deliver a package that created an impulse buy. And by that I mean there was no other way around it...you simply had to have that game no matter what based on what the package looked like and how it presented the software inside the box.
Silent Service for the Atari 8-bit computer consoles was developed by
Secret Quest, the last 2600 U.S. released game, gives the 2600 the dignity to go out with a bang. Not that it wouldn't anyway with all the popular games it had received during its production run. No matter how you look at it, the 2600 proved that gaming hardware was only limited by imagination, and Secret Quest takes that imagination and gives players an adventure they won't soon forget.
While misleading in a way, the label tells the game was made by Nolan Bushnell when in hindsight he basic
When I first got into emulators I, like many others, discovered computers could play NES games. I also discovered that some of the game ROMs I was looking at I never heard of before. When did the NES get Gradius II, what was Parodius? And what was Salamander? I ended up getting what I thought were NES games I had never heard of. In hindsight, and unbeknown to my mind, I was getting Famicom games. When I fired up Salamander I had no idea that I had unintentionally grabbed what we got (us USA g
Today when I checked the mail there was a package in there containing a game I have not seen since the Y2K debate. This is one PlayStation game I bought as soon as it hit store shelves along with a guide book. Being a huge fan of the first Gran Turismo this was one game I was highly excited about. So getting it in the mail was an exciting moment for me. A game that has eluded me many times was now in my hands, complete and ready...no...begging to be played.
I spent many months on this g
Over the past several months I have been discovering Atari 2600 games for the first time...just like those who owned one way back when the machine was the only console on the market. So far I've discovered Solaris and few others I had never seen or heard of before. The 2600 has managed to surprise me again with a rare title known as Radar Lock.
Radar Lock appears similar to Sega's After Burner but after a few minutes in the game you get so sucked into the on-screen action that you forget wha
Out of all the video games Atari produced it seems that Pac-Man for the 2600 has been blamed, almost entirely, for the start of the video game crash that happened during the early 1980's. It is also marked as one of the worst games made in video gaming history. By now most Atari 2600 owners, new and vets, know what this game is like so there really is no need to dig into how the game play actually is. But hopefully this little blog post will put the game in a different perspective to where the g
Nintendo's shock of announcing a miniature NES with 30 games built-in a few weeks before I wrote this article seems to have been met with mixed feelings. With all of the clone systems on the market based on the original NES, that perform well but might have mistakes here and there like a few colors wrong or sounds not quite right, it makes one wonder why Nintendo didn't think of it sooner. After all, Atari, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and Sega, have had remakes of their consoles on the market f
For my 13th birthday, in 1987, my mother picked up a game system I never knew nor heard of. It just mysteriously appeared. For I had unwrapped a game console that would forever change the way I perceived video games. That gift was the Nintendo Entertainment System. At first I didn't like the controllers because there was no joystick. In a joystick's place was this "thing" that controlled on-screen movement of a playable character or other image. Then again when the only games you have are
I believe I have my summer gaming all figured out. I plan to participate heavily in the forum's Pizza Party with what games I do have PLUS it will be nice to revisit Zelda again...a game I have not played in decades.
Just tonight Microsoft, for whatever reason, gave me a $5.00 gift card on my account. I wondered what $5 could do and browse the 360 game store first to see if there was anything of interest there. My nephew informed me of 360 games that were now free including Crackdown 2,
Video games were once considered a novelty and a source of entertainment. No one knew how long they would last or where they would take us. Most of the older generation of gamers will most likely be able to tell stories of lining up quarters on popular arcade machines as a marker of when it would be their turn at the challenges awaiting them. I'm one of them. Feeding those machines quarter after quarter for a few minutes of entertainment never felt like enough. Sometimes it wasn't enough to
During the first year of the 5200's production run, the system received many ports of popular arcade hits. Every dot-munchin' gamer loved Pac-Man, a game the 5200 received shortly after initial release. To Atari ... it only made sense to bring the Queen of Video Games, Ms. Pac-Man, for SuperSystem owners to enjoy in the comfort of their homes.
Ms. Pac-Man on the 5200 contains everything the arcade hit has including very accurate multiple mazes, intermissions, music and sounds. Pressin
My first encounter with Mouse Trap, the video game and not the board game, was not until 2011 when I had, for a short time, a Colecovision console with some games. I ended up selling that off to help with holiday funds that same year. I would not see Mouse Trap again until about Spring 2016. This time the game would be for the granddaddy of all consoles...the Atari 2600.
Mouse Trap is a different take on the Pac-Man theme. The player controls a mouse that is hurrying to eat up all the cheese
