August 2013 – Page 2 – Obsolete Gamer

The Six Million Dollar Man: Bionic Crisis

Bionic Crisis was a game that contained both elements of chance and deductive reasoning. To set up, each player took one of the four Console Boxes and inserted a Console Card into it. The red and yellow board pegs are placed somewhere where everyone can reach them. Then the deck of Bionic Circuit Cards was shuffled, and one was dealt to each player, who kept it hidden from his or her opponents. Finally, the deck of Number Cards was shuffled, with each player given three cards and the rest placed face down for everyone to draw from during gameplay. Once set up, the play began.

Game Reviews

ausretrogamer

Atari Inc: Business Is Fun

From its very beginnings, Atari lacked (business) discipline and clear market direction. It is evident from this book, that Atari just wanted to be part of the video games action, no matter what. Co-founder Nolan Bushnell aggressively advanced the company and Atari’s market and popularity grew rapidly. It seemed that Atari could not put a foot wrong – everything they created, from coin operated machines to the Video Computer System (2600) console, turned to gold.

DOS Games PC

Harris Aspros

Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now

It is great because this game was criticised like few when it first came out for the violence it contained that according to parents at the time would turn us all into killing machines by the age of 18… I haven’t still killed a person and I had a blast with the game. although from what I know in some countries the changed the pedestrians to animals or aliens for that same reason.

Game Boy Handheld Games

Simon Reed

Special Forces

CT Special Forces almost gets it right, but sadly falls a little short of being considered a notable Metal Slug clone. It definitely looks the part though, with rather attractive hand drawn graphics and a nice varied bunch of levels. A good range of weapons are grenades are also on show. The controls are also quite good, with the shoulder buttons used for throwing grenades and swapping weapons.

GameCube

Adam R.

Soul Calibur II

That reason was because Link from the Legend of Zelda was a playable character. Spawn was in the Xbox version while Heihachi from Tekken was in the PS2 version. I remember some fanboys of the other two systems saying Link didn’t even fit in the SC universe. Yeah I’m sure a weaponless fighter and an african-american demon from hell are perfect matches too. Link fit well with his master sword, bow, and bombs.

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Dominique Vial: Domsware

We were on our final “lycée” studies and we needed to prepare THE french exam named “baccalauréat”. It’s very important to make a big score to this exam because it’s the passcard to university and High Schools. Anyway. We spend a lot of time playing DM instead of working our final exams. Locked on my friend’s bedroom, our parents believed we were working on our studies! Ah ah ah! It was a really immersive and addictive game. And, for the story purpose, a friend of my elder brother was working on some computer science laboratory on some kind of “network”. He was helping us by providing us printed listings containing the precious answers to hard DM’s issues: these was from this mysterious “network”. Later and later I found the name of this guy on a W3C document: I then understood he was one of the first working on the internet and that was the mysterious network. He was a pioneer while we were exploring dungeons !

Game Reviews

Luis Zena

Dig Dug 2

This time around is Dig Dug 2 for the NES. We have been hitting a lot of NES games lately so it’s only fair to continue with them but the next couple of months will showcase other consoles, that’s for sure. This game is different from its predecessor as it takes place in the open. The first one took place underground. I’m guessing the monsters found a way outside and our little hero must blow them up once again. It’s not an amazing title, but it’s definitely worth a mention.

TurboGrafx-16

Chris Bucci

Deep Blue

I envision this as the official game of the Aquaman kingdom. In Deep Blue you go from the calm, beautiful ocean above to the evil depths in your A.N.G.E.L. Fish attack sub. Your mission is to take out the swarms of alien mutant fish.

NES

Eric Bailey

Twin Cobra

Twin Cobra does not have the most polished presentation, but it definitely offers a challenge that makes hearty demands on a player’s reflexes and flight tactics. Fans of the genre will enjoy discovering the absolute to-the-pixel limits of the chopper’s hit box, while casual players may be intrigued by the sheer amount of action on the screen at any given moment. There are even boss fights to contend with. Better than the plainest of shooters but not quite as refined in its quality as the better titles, Twin Cobra is quite decent, and will be fancied by some while ignored by others.

Company Representatives Gamer Profiles

J.A. Laraque

Kevin Cerdà: BeautiFun Games

This isn’t a really known game. However, I believe that it was really innovative at the moment it appeared. It was made by Mythos games, with Julian Gollop, creator of X-COM. In Magic & Mayhem you really felt like a wizard, combining spells in many clever ways (such as levitating and enemy and turning it into stone to smash it against the ground, breaking it into pieces). It was like a strategy game with the full base inside one single character that was able to move around and create minions out of nothing without any cooldown at all. Really surprising, fresh and dynamic. A source of inspiration.

Indie Games

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Dead Meets Lead

To the game’s defense though one could add that by featuring a shotgun it does turn itself into a rather lovely yet more traditional arena-shooter. One would of course be only partly correct, as the ammunition for the shotgun (and the rest of the firearms that are eventually unlocked) is far too sparse and in certain levels simply absent, which is a crying shame. Shooting the zombie hordes as a cursed pirate on a bleak exotic island is immensely enjoyable and goes on to show how great Dead Meets Lead could have been; especially if it had bothered to include a few save-points in its brutally hard levels.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Droidscape: Basilica

The year is 4057, and a power-hungry Ecclesiarchy has plunged humanity into a new Dark Ages. One of few remaining Chronomancers dedicated to preserving the secrets of time-travel has been taken hostage on the gargantuan Basilica space station, and if he dies, an already dark world will get a lot darker. Only a small, unarmed droid named Bishop 7 can save him—and only with your help.

Nintendo DS

J.A. Laraque

Oracle of Seasons

Now the zones in the game are pretty interesting. Remember going to the dark world in Link to the Past, well, while the changes are not that drastic there are four different versions of every screen you are on when in the outside world. This is because of the four seasons. As I said, the seasons changing can help you get somewhere you could not normally. For instance, a lake in the summer is frozen so you can walk over it in the winter.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

SteelSeries & Valve Introduce The Siberia v2 Dota 2 Edition Headset

SteelSeries, the worldwide leader in professional grade gaming peripherals along with Valve, developer of Dota 2 and creator of The International Tournament, today announced the Siberia v2 Illuminated Gaming Headset Dota®2 Special Edition which features an exclusive in-game item, Scythe of Vyse for Nature’s Prophet. In addition to the new headset, SteelSeries will also roll out two new SteelSeries QcK+ mousepads featuring character artwork from the game.

Atari ST

Simon Lethbridge

Switchblade

It’s also worth looking out for Fireblade fragments, of course, and successful recovery of all sixteen pieces bestows a sizeable bonus upon Hiro as well as the option of using the Fireblade as a seventh weapon power-up. It will be a while before that becomes possible though as Switchblade is a pretty big game. It consists of five levels but, although ending with a boss fight, each level continues on from the last so there’s no real break between them. This extends to the look of them.

Editorials

J.A. Laraque

Breaking down Everquest Next: The Rallying Call

Sony said settlements that are successful remain in the game forever, so what happens if you fail? Can you imagine the crying that will go out if you see videos of a successful settlement and you think it is really cool, but on your sever for whatever reason it failed? Would the risk vs. reward people find it cool that it was even possible to fail or will they be mad they have such “terrible players” that they could not even finish the settlement causing issues within that severs community?

TurboGrafx-16

Chris Bucci

Chew-Man-Fu

Perhaps it is the Japanese equivalent to the Ham-burglar. In Chew Man Fu your mission is to stop this hungry little man from stealing all the worlds’ fried rice and egg rolls. The game plays sort of like Pengo and you have to take out the enemies by firing the balls you place on each of the 500 stages. Developed by Now Productions and published by Hudson Soft and NEC in 1990 you can also find this game on the Wii’s virtual console.