July 2012 – Obsolete Gamer

World Games

One odd side item worth mentioning is a humorous glitch in the Sumo Wrestling game: Although normal gameplay would not reveal it, the wrestling ring level wraps. In other words, what goes off one side of the screen will appear on the other. While it is not possible to walk outside the bounds of the ring without losing the match, there is a move that throws the opposing player backwards. If done at the very edge of the ring, the flung opponent will reach the edge of the screen; or, at least, his head will. This means that his body will be laying still on one side, while his head suddenly jumps over to the other, creating the appearance of a decapitation! Other weird visuals can be achieved with other games, such as the weightlifter who holds the barbells too long and falls through the floor after turning blue.

Pictures

J.A. Laraque

Pic-O-Funny: Ho-Made BBQ Sauce

Who says hoes can’t many anything good?

Blog

Patrick Scott Patterson

Ecstasy of Order now on DVD

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a documentary film about the 2010 Classic TetrisWorld Championship, is now available on DVD. The film, which has won a number of film festival awards since starting on the circuit last year, has ties starting with the 1990 Nintendo World Championships and leads up to the 2010 California event that invited many of the current day Tetris champions to compete, including Robin Mihara, Jonas Neubauer and Harry Hong.

Game Boy Handheld Games

Luis Zena

Primal Rage: Gameboy

Here comes one of the more decent fighters for the forgotten portable handheld. Primal Rage brings you dino-busting action to the palm of your hand and even though our handhelds nowadays do this with ease, this was a tough task back in the golden age of gameboy. Lots of other fighters were introduced and failed misserably and although not that playable, they still manage to give you an experience to their console predecessors. Primal Rage is one of them. While not offering much, this little cartridge offers more than enough to keep you entertain for a good amount of time, the time of course is your choice. Like many of the old titles of the original gameboy, this game is as simple to pick up and play.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Ristar: Free on Dotemu

Now I played this back in the day and loved the style. The game really excels in its soundtrack that features catchy tunes and themes and the boss music is pretty awesome as well. Most of the game involves jumping, swinging and bashing enemies’ against your head as you make your way towards the boss. However, Ristar features a lot of cool puzzles and secret areas to discovery and there is real strategy involved in the gameplay. With the DotEmu package you can choose to play in windowed mode or full screen with several resolution options so it will play on pretty much any system. Like emulators, you can save the game at any point which is a pretty awesome feature. The game plays just like the original and you can use keyboard controls or connect a joystick. I use the Xbox 360 controller which was automatically detected by the program.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Game of Thrones: 16-bit style

Our video of the day comes from the fantastically funny folks over at College Humor. This time they take the season one storyline from Game of Thrones and put it into a Final Fantasy style game. For those who played the SNES versions of FF you will notice the style right away. The video is especially funny if you watched all of season one of Game of Thrones, but is funny nonetheless.

Hardware

J.A. Laraque

Kingston HyperX 3K Series 240GB SSD Review

We tested the 240GB version of the Kingston HyperX for this review. For people looking to add more programs and games in addition to their operating system, this size is a perfect fit. This model is also lower in price costing a litter over two dollars. For your O/S 100GBs of space is a good number to go with. I personally have used as low as 50GBs with a few applications added, but was always low on drive space. With this 240GB drive, you will have more than enough room for your operating system, your applications and games. If you collect media like movies and music you could add them as well, but its best to run those from a traditional drive as it does not really impact performance.

Indie Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Waveform

Not all is perfect though. Especially as things get more hectic the controls can feel a tad unresponsive. Oh, and despite the variety on offer and even them hidden levels, said things can actually get repetitive, especially when you are frantically trying to play through the game for a review… Then again, and in what can only be considered a showcase of spontaneous dialects, it remains both fun and addictive; a bit like Tetris actually. What’s more, Waveform is indeed something one has to definitely try in order to experience an oddly relaxing yet essentially arcade game.

Game Reviews

J.A. Laraque

Fat People Are Hard to Kidnap

This is an awesome commercial for an all you can eat buffet at a Marriot in Singapore. You know they would never show a ad like this in the states.

Atari 2600

Matt McKee

Superman: Atari 2600

The first part that bothers me (and there’s a big list), is there’s actually no proof that Luthor had anything to do with The Great Metropolis Bridge Explosion of 1978. Whatever reason, I felt Superman was just picking on him a bit. All Luthor does is fly around the entire game with a propeller coming out of his head, and for some reason, wearing Aquaman’s Underoos. As embarrassing as that is, I’m guessing he committed no crime. Also, why these random 6 criminals? Only reason I see is they’re carrying these huge tommy-guns (what year is this anyway?), but they never actually use them.

Guides

J.A. Laraque

First Steps: Guild Wars 2

The idea with this questing system is to keep things fresh and new. The events will change from time to time and what you and other players do will have a real effect on the game. In the main story mode you are mostly in instanced areas, but the random quests still apply there as well. As for dungeons, you first encounter a dungeon in story mode meaning there will be less monsters and difficulty as it is for only you. However, once you finish a dungeon you unlock the “explorer” mode where there are much more monsters, loot and even path choices to make giving the dungeon replayability.

Blog

Patrick Scott Patterson

Joust turns 30

The two-player feature helped Joust make an impact in the coin box at arcades across the country. While the ability for numerous players to play together has been a common feature in arcades for some time, in 1982 it was quite the novelty for two players to be able to play at the same time. Adding to the feature were offers of bonus points on certain levels, some of which encouraged teamwork and others that encouraged direct competition.

TurboGrafx-16

Chris Bucci

TaleSpin

Released by Radiance Software in 1991, TaleSpin follows the adventures of Captain Baloo and Kit Cloudkicker from the Disney animated series. In the game, you are after the lost treasure of Ionia, but an evil Witch Doctor called Watusi stands in your way.

Editorials

Simon Lethbridge

Star Control: The Ships

The first Star Control title really is a game of two-halves. The ‘Main’ game is seen as the strategy side of the game with its turn-based, territorial expansion-based shenanigans, while the ‘Melee’ mode is seen as the action, shoot ’em up side, but it is a lot more strategic than people realise itself. Each of the fourteen starships in the game has many variables, as can be seen in some of the screenshots below and, while it’s possible for any one ship to defeat any one other, there are certain ships that are better or worse against certain others, and many crafty tactics can be employed to exploit their weaknesses.

Game Reviews

J.A. Laraque

Michelle Jenneke: Sexy Dancer

With the Olympics upon us we will have plenty of chances to see sexy athletes doing what they do in their sport. This time around we get an early treat as Austrian runner, Michelle Henneke is caught on video warming up with a sexy little jumping/dancing act. Of course, soon after it hit the internet it went viral complete with music. Enjoy.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Epic Scents: The scent of Mega Man

These scents are meant to be displayed and will come infused in small cut-outs of the characters. These cut-outs can be hung in cars or your mother’s basement or wherever you wish to extinguish the smell of the modern gamer. You will see these air fresheners hit the stories within a few weeks and they will cost around 3 bucks each. Word is if everything goes well they may expand to colognes and perfumes. Can you just imagine buying your girlfriend, “Essence of Metroid”, you might actually pause the game when she comes in the room.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Classic download of the Week: Kid Icarus – Of Myths and Monsters

Pit will encounter old friends and new enemies – from helpful Centurions to the dreaded Eggplant Wizard – as he journeys from the depths of the underworld to the towers of the sky palace. Find hammers to shatter special walls and reveal helpful items. Collect hearts by fighting off Pit’s foes. Train hard and battle harder. Pit’s challenges make the labors of Hercules look like a walk in the park.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YepzdVuRoNw