While I’m familiar with the concept of vibrating football games, I have to admit they’re nothing more than a pop-culture footnote to me. I understand football (not soccer) the game, but I have no idea how the randomly moving and spinning figurines on the game board correlate to running plays or any kind of strategy at all. In fact I’m pretty sure there’s an old vibrating football game kicking around my parent’s home, but it was easily trumped by the C64 when I was a kid.
But with Father’s Day coming up, I’m sure this would make for a nice nostalgia trip for most dads past the age of 40. And who knows, those updated graphics and official NFL branding might just convince me to give it a second chance. If I could find it for a bit cheaper than $79.50 that is.
My appreciation for Star Fox on the Super Nintendo has grown over the years, and I think it’s because the game’s a perfect example of a developer doing more with less. There’s no denying the Super Nintendo was not a 3D gaming system, in fact, Star Fox probably wouldn’t have existed had Nintendo not agreed to the development of the much hyped Super FX 3D accelerator chip. But even with that extra bit of hardware inside the game cart, the graphics and effects seen in Star Fox were pretty crude. The ship design was basic, enemies at times consisted of nothing more than 3D un-textured trapezoids, but nevertheless everything worked, and came together to become a memorable title.
As I recall, Star Fox was technically a rail shooter, which meant that you weren’t flying around a completely open world. But since you had control over your ship’s speed with braking and boosts, you never really felt restricted while navigating your pre-planned course. And while the game was really nothing more than a mindless shooter, the novelty of the 3D combined with great gameplay made it stand out from the crowd. But to be honest, while I have very fond memories of Star Fox, the Fox McCloud puppet on the game box still kind of creeps me out, and even though he was on my side, I would have loved to been able to shoot down that annoying Slippy Toad character.
This week on TGWP I wanted to dig back through my gaming memories as far as I could go, all the way back to the beginning in fact. Like with most families, the Commodore 64 entered our home because my parents thought it would help me in my grade school career with tasks like word processing and what-not. And like with most families, the C64 ended up being a video game console more than anything. Now I’m not sure if the cartridge came bundled with the system or not, but I do know that Radar Rat Race was the very first video game I ever played, on any system. And you know what they say, you never forget your first.
In the game you played as a rat, racing through a maze, trying to collect pieces of cheese while avoiding other rats and randomly placed cats that served as stationary traps more than anything. Besides steering your rat around the maze, the only trick you had to avoid nasty confrontations was to leave a trail behind you that other rats couldn’t cross, and if you were cunning enough, it could be used to trap them as well. Because it was the first game I ever played, I have a lot of very distinct memories of Radar Rat Race, and if you’ve ever wanted to get that Three Blind Mice song stuck in your head, I highly recommend checking out the ‘gameplay’ video I’ve included below.
I’ve discovered that I’m the kind of guy who finds himself baking something tasty at least once a month. I don’t really have a love for baking, nor am I usually making something for a get-together. Rather, I just happen to like the taste of cake and cookies, so I’ll just end up making some for myself instead of conning someone else into doing it. As a gamer, I’ve been wondering how to represent my gaming affection with my baking tools. (Okay, I haven’t actually been wondering that, but just play along.) So how does one do that exactly? With Pac-Man oven mitts of course!
The Pac-Man HotHead Oven Mitts are made completely from silicone and resemble our favorite yellow pill-eater. To give the inside of his mouth a bit of extra grip, it has been designed to look like the classic Pac-Man map. You can pick one of these up starting in April for $15.
Well, with a bastardized updated version of Oregon Trail coming to the iPhone at the end of the month, I thought it was only fitting that this week’s ‘The Games We Played’ should cover that classic title that taught us all how easy it was to lose family members to dysentery.
But, I thought I’d do something different this week. Instead of reminiscing about the thousands upon thousands of buffalo I killed (while only carrying 100 pounds of meat back to my dying family) I figured the trip down memory lane would be a lot funner for all of us by simply playing the game again. So if you head on over to VirtualApple.org, you’ll actually be able to enjoy a Java port of Oregon Trail right in your web browser. Now you’ll need to have Java installed, but that’s a minor inconvenience to spend some quality time with an old friend. Just be careful on those river crossings!
I don’t drop the ‘L’ word very often, so when I proclaim my love for the Legend of Zelda series, you know it means something. And that love affair started with this game, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, which I not only consider to be the greatest Game Boy title of all time, but one of the greatest titles on any platform, ever. Oddly enough, for the longest time I had no interest in the Zelda series, since the top down perspective made me think it was a turn-based strategy game, which I loathe. But I needed a game to pass the time on a long family vacation, and a friend of mine was good enough to loan me his copy. After just a few hours of playing, my eyes were opened.
I haven’t replayed Link’s Awakening since I finished it so many years ago, but I remember it felt like it would never end, and I couldn’t understand how Nintendo managed to cram such a large game into a single cartridge. Of course Link’s Awakening was actually the fourth game in the series, and even though I had a bona fide case of Zelda fever after playing it, I only went back and tackled the previous Super Nintendo title, A Link to the Past afterwards. But since Link’s Awakening, every Zelda title has been a must-have for me. (Except for The Wand of Gamelon, nooooo thank-you Philips.)
The thing I like most about these silver plated Transformers cufflinks is the bipartisan approach they take. Let’s face it, the war over Cybertron isn’t going to stop until both sides, the Autobots and the Decepticons, come to some peaceful agreement. And seeing people walk around with just a single logo on their hoodie or t-shirt, showing support for one side over the other, does not help the healing process. These cufflinks however feature the logos of both factions, and tell the world that you’re tired of all the fighting and action-packed battle sequences, and just want to see both sides start working together… to take down those G.I. Joe jerks!!
I’ve got nothing against the concept of sequels, sometimes it’s nice to have a new adventure with familiar characters and locales. But when it comes to video games, I prefer titles that provide an altogether new experience. Like say, the experience of being a jockey riding a nearly unsteerable rocket while careening around a gladiator style arena. It might sound far-fetched, but that’s exactly what a game called Rocket Jockey provided. Whether you were simply racing to the finish in the ‘Rocket Race’ mode, enjoying a little deathmatch action in the ‘Rocket War’ mode or attempting to score a goal, or prevent others from doing so, in the ‘Rocket Ball’ mode. (My personal favorite.)
But obviously riding a rocket around an arena while crashing into walls can only provide so much fun. And that’s why the rockets in Rocket Jockey featured grappling cables that could be used to temporarily tether your missile to a wall, pole or other objects in order to ‘steer’ it around the course. It was a very unique experience, but thanks to solid gameplay mechanics, it actually worked very well. But the grappling cables could also be used to latch onto other rockets in order to pull them off course, giant balls which you had to maneuver into a goal for points, or even other jockeys who were unfortunate enough to fall off their ride.
Unfortunately Rocket Jockey had its issues which prevented it from becoming a truly classic title (and dare I say, spawning a sequel) like promised multiplayer that only arrived via a patch months after the title was released, and steep system requirements (yep, those were cutting-edge graphics at one point.) But the fact that there have been several grassroots efforts to remake the game with the Unreal Tournament or Quake engines over the years proves the game has been sorely missed by a lot of us.
It really wasn’t until the infamous third iteration of Grand Theft Auto that the game became a target for the media and the poster child for video game violence. But believe it or not, many of us were stealing cars and committing unspeakable acts of civil disobedience long before GTAIII was even announced. That’s right, while it might have lacked the fancy 3D graphics of its descendants, the original Grand Theft Auto was still a heck of a lot of fun. The game featured a top-down perspective of the original versions of Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City, and relied heavily on sprite animations for the cars and characters, though 3D effects were sparingly used for the buildings and other elements.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember seeing the original Grand Theft Auto pop-up on the evening news in stories about how it was corrupting our youth, even though you could pretty much do everything you can do in the current versions of the game. I guess sprite-based characters just aren’t as endearing or realistic as their modern 3D counterparts.
One of the reasons I really liked the original GTA(and its sequels) was the sandbox approach to the gameplay that basically allowed you to ignore the missions, and just drive around ‘having fun.’ In fact I rarely completed a single mission in the game, even though I played it for hours on end. And while it might not be the most admirable thing to be remembered for, we can’t forget that it was the original GTA that first introduced us to the phrase, “Kill Frenzy!”
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