In the aftermath of Doom and Doom II‘s critical and financial success, many software companies sought to duplicate id Software’s successes.  Some chose to attempt to out-Doom Doom, bringing forth various first-person shooters in an attempt to capture the same market.  Some chose the classic business maneuver of poaching talent, seeking to duplicate the successes of id Software by tempting their brightest minds away with a van full of candy.  American James McGee (yes, that’s his name; no, it’s not a nickname), whose resume included everything from being a tester onWolfenstein 3D, to a level designer for Doom II, to a co-producer for Hexen: Beyond Heretic, was one of those targets.  At the tender age of 28, McGee jumped ship to Electronic Arts in 1998, and was given free rein to direct, write, and design the game of his own choosing.  That game, of course, was American McGee’s Alice.

Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass had long since passed into the public domain, and several new visions of the setting had already come to pass in cinema, literature, and gaming (such as Wonderland).  However, McGee’s take on the Alice mythos pushed its darkness further into the open.  The game begins with a tragic house fire claiming the lives of young Alice’s family, sending her spiralling into despair and catatonia.  For years she remains within a sanitarium, until one day the White Rabbit returns – not the delightful White Rabbit of her youth, but a somewhat bedraggled White Rabbit, its absent-mindedness no longer charming, but eerie.  Once again Alice follows it into Wonderland, where all is not as it was: the Cheshire Cat is mangy and underfed (but still smiling); the Duchess and the Mad Hatter want to kill her; and the Red Queen rules with a bloody, iron fist.

The level design was absolutely stunning in its 3-D dark surrealism. Alice follows the White Rabbit into the Village of the Damned, where she is reintroduced to the Cheshire Cat, and can locate the Vorpal Blade so she can go all snicker-snack on her opponents.  Next comes the Vale of Tears, a foggy realm that is home to the ravenous Duchess and the poor Mock Turtle who needs his shell back.  Other areas include finding the wise Caterpillar in the Cave of the Oracle; experiencing the chessboard realm of the White Queen; the twisted version of Rutledge Asylum that houses Tweedledum and Tweedledee, as well as the Mad Hatter; the volcanic lair of the Jabberwocky; and the final castle level of the Queen of Hearts. Each level shows the strength of American McGee’s talent for level design as well as the versatility of theQuake III Arena game engine it uses to bring it all to life.

Another element important to the atmosphere of American McGee’s Alice is its aural component, including the voice acting, sound effects, and musical score.  On this front, the game excels.  The voice acting was performed by professional voice actors, with experience in film, television and gaming projects, such as Roger Jackson (who voiced the Cheshire Cat, the Jabberwocky, and the Dormouse…as well as the telephone voice for the Scream movies), Susie Brann (who was the voice of Alice), Andrew Chaikin (who voiced the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare), Anni Long (who voiced the Red Queen and The Duchess), and Jarion Monroe (who voiced the Caterpiller).  As for the game’s soundtrack,  Chris Vrenna (who drummed for Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails for 8 years), approached the challenge of composing the music for the game by looking for instrumentation that sounded like they could be from the Alice’s era, but also having a “creepy” or “bizarre” sound that “created a mood”.   To this end he used toy pianos, penny whistles, toy accordions, wind-up musical boxes, zippers, grandfather clocks, and more.  Ultimately, between the eerie music and the wonderful voice acting, the game fulfills all its audio expectations.

Of course, American McGee’s Alice is not a perfect game. The level design is brilliant, but the gameplay has its pedestrian moments. For instance, if you are a fan of games that require platform-style jumping to avoid enemies, locate items and switches, and to find level exits, this is the game for you. For those that find all this leaping about a tad annoying…not so much. It’s best to familiarize yourself with the controls for jumping quickly in this game, as you will be doing a lot of it. However, if you can get past that, the rest of the gameplay has enough variation to keep the player wanting more.

American McGee’s Alice proved popular enough to inspire a toy line from Milo’s Workshop.  These limited movement action figures featured Alice with the Cheshire Cat, the Card Guards, the Jabberwocky, the Caterpillar, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter, and the White Rabbit.  The quality is similar to Todd McFarlane’s toy line, and were released from 2000 through 2004, and continue to have some value on the collector market.

It’s been over 10 years since Electronic Arts released the game that gave us all a disturbing insight into the mind of former id Software level designer American McGee.  That’s right, American McGee’s Alice was released in October, 2000, so those who remember buying it on its release date, should take a moment to realize time is marching on.  For those who never played this classic PC game, pay your respects to those of us who did.  After all, we’re probably Elders of the gaming community at this point.  With the sequel finally being released, do yourself a favor and play the original.  Your Elders demand it.

Magisterrex has been gaming since the days of Pong and still owns a working Atari 2600. He tends to ramble on about retro games, whether they be board games, video games or PC games.  If you’re into classic old school gaming check out his blog here

The game is fun at some parts especially when you take in play the domino factor. If you hit the right object, you will make everything along the way blow up! Isn’t that what wrecking as all about? Either way you put it, the game gets a little frustrating later on, but it’s ok, you can try as many times as you want in order to conquer your wrecking urges. This game was part of the “black box” NES releases which means it’s pretty generic, so don’t expect much from it.
One of the reasons I picked this title as a retro game of the week is because this game shows that it doesn’t have to be great to have a little fun. With the flaws it may have, and the difficulty it may provide, you can still have a great time with it. Just don’t let Werio hit you with the hammer or the wieners will get you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Famicomfreak is a classic gaming writer and collector you can view his main blog here – Retro Gaming Life

Jaws: The Revenge was the third movie of the Jaws franchise, seeking to once again capitalize on the monster (no pun intended) success of the original, record-breaking film. The video game that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System was arguably better than the big-screen version.

Gameplay

The game follows a character that is seeking the kill the giant Jaws shark.

Graphics

Although the looks of the title were somewhat pixelated and crude, in certain instances (such as the jellyfish bonus levels, etc.) you can tell this is done intentionally to create a comical, cartoonish effect. In a way, this is a brilliant, albeit weird idea: Create a dichotomy between friendly, cartoony under-the-sea creatures against the dark, sharp, jagged features of the Jaws bosses.

Soundtrack

Excellent song tracks here, with atmospheric synths featuring the ever-familiar suspense-building theme of the series. Even the between-levels music is upbeat and catchy. The overworld view, when the boat is directed, drones on repetitively until it becomes aggravating. However, this may have been intentional, simulating the long days at sea.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Innovation

Usually, movie-themed video games are developed too quickly, as they seek to capitalized on a film’s popularity as rapidly as possible. While this may have been the case with Jaws, it does not show; the game is actually decent on its own merits, with some interesting themes. For example, there are a few modes of play: The overworld view, where the boat seeks upgrades while trying to avoid Jaws; the diving scenes, where the diver attacks creatures while collecting items; and bonus scenes, where bombing jellyfish (yes, bombing jellyfish) earns extra points toward upgrades; and a special section, whenever Jaws’ energy is depleted in the diving scenes. There is even a “hidden” mini-sub upgrade for the diver, making him faster and providing more firepower.

Ultimately, this is a fun, quirky, rewarding movie game, worth a respectable three-point-two-five stars out of five.

Eric Bailey is a retro gamer on a crazy quest to write a quality review for every single American-released NES video game over at NintendoLegend.com.

Let me start off by saying I’m not a huge fan of fighting games, in particular the 1 vs 1 games like Tekken or Mortal Kombat. I get bored with them easily, and all I seem to do is “button-mash” and hope for the best. Having said that, I wanted to try JLTF, because as a huge DC guy, I wanted to play around with the heavy hitters that I’ve known all my life. Thought that may pull me into it, instead of fighting with “fat guy who open-hand slaps me”, “dude with chain that strangles me”, or “hot chick who flips around but boobs never fall out”. Plus, this is supposed to have a storyline with Darkseid, so how bad could it be?

The game doesn’t start well. I choose Superman, of course, because he’s the baddest and I want to mow through people. The first thing I notice is Blizzard/Acclaim didn’t have the plums to tell DC that they weren’t going to model Supes after Jurgens’ mullet-Supey, so I’d have to look at that the rest of the way. Just sad really.

The storyline has Darkseid attacking a military base?!?! Big Blue is going to contact a JLAer to tell them about it. Suddenly, Green Arrow attacks me!!? WTF? I’m forced to fight him, which should lasts .0002 seconds, but somehow he’s fighting off cold breath, heat vision, and punches….that’s realistic. After “battle”, I decided to talk to Aquaman to see what’s up, AND THAT DUDE ATTACKS ME!!! Where are the villains?!

This keeps going on until Superman figures out that the real heroes must be kidnapped and he’s fighting robots. Holy crap. Once Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman “robots” are torn apart, Darkseid decides to throw CHEETAH at me!…………yes, Cheetah is the chick that wears a cat costume. Worst. Villain. Plan. Ever.

For whatever reason, I was forced to “fight” her, when all I really wanted to do was let her break a nail on my Kryptonian abs and make her go poop in her cat box. Despero is next, which is nice, because he’s a tough dude, and…well…HE’S A BAD GUY!! Darkseid is still not ready to face me yet, as he throws a Superman robot at me, I guess trying to confuse me. He forgot that as a boy in Smallville, I used to make these robots so Lana Lang wouldn’t think Clark/Supes were the same person. Should have done your homework, son. After the recycling was taken out, Darkseid decides to come after me himself. Getting hit with those Omega Beams, I thought,”Boy, he always talked a lot of smack about these, but they’re not really doing that much damage? Kind of a wimp.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now do you see why I don’t like these games. It’s just ridiculous that all these costumes are on the same power level, and the winner is the person who presses buttons the quickest….unless it’s Superman Vs Muhammad Ali…..that shit was real!

Old Game Reviewer reviews classic and retro games, you can check out more of his great work on his blog here – Old Game reviewer.

In 1996, Activision released Zork: Nemesis, a visually-stunning game, but with an overtly dark theme and a serious – even intense – game atmosphere, very unlike any other game in the Zork series.  (So dark, in fact, that the Infocom label was not included on the box!)  Nemesis was a great game, but something had to be done to bring back the humor and irreverence of all things Zork.  And so, a year later, in 1997, Activision released a new game in the Zork / Enchanter series, set 580 years before Return to Zork, and with an eye to bringing the series back to its roots – Zork: Grand Inquisitor.

The story behind Zork: Grand Inquisitor was fairly basic: magic has been banned by the merciless Inquisition, and the Dungeon Master has been trapped within a trusty adventurer’s lantern.  The player is called upon by the Dungeon Master – “I shall call you ageless, faceless, gender-neutral, culturally ambiguous, adventurer person. AFGNCAAP for short. ” – to restore the magic outlawed by the Inquisition in Quendor.  To do so, AFGNCAAP must locate the lost Zorkian magical treasures of the Coconut of Quendor, the Skull of Yoruk, and one of the Cubes of Foundation, with which a torrent of magic will be released, defeating the plans of the Grand Inquisitor and his minions.  Sounds easy, right?

The technology used by Zork: Grand Inquisitor was a modified version of the Z-Vision game engine first used in Zork: Nemesis.  A full lateral sweep of 360 degrees was available to the player, but not any vertical movement (with a couple of exceptions based on unique scenes at GUE Tech and at the Flathead Mesa).  Human characters were portrayed by actors in full motion video, while non-human characters, such as Marvin the Goatfish, were clay models which were then digitized and animated.  Zork: Grand Inquisitor used lighting effects to draw the eye of the player to explorable areas, permitting the player to spend more time engrossed in puzzle-solving rather than the standard mouse click-fest and hunt-and-click routines of many adventure games.

The voice acting was superb, with Hollywood-class talent giving life to the various characters, which included Michael McKean (as the lantern-trapped Dungeon Master, Dalboz of Gurth) and David L. Lander (whom many will recall played Squiggy inLaverne & Shirley, as the font of ridiculous proclamations, the Voice of the Inquisition).  Some of the actors involved who had both visual and audio parts included Dirk Benedict as Antharia Jack, Rip Taylor as Chief Undersecretary Wartle, and Erick Avari, as Mir Yannick, the pompous, over-his-head but desperately attempting to fake it, Grand Inquisitor.  The effect was to improve the gameplay, especially during cutscenes, which can be excruciating when players are forced to watch the programmer’s second cousin who once acted in a school play gamely work their way through a script. *shudder*

Zork: Grand Inquisitor received good reviews (PC Gamer Magazine gave it an Editor’s Choice award and scored it at 88% in its May, 1988 issue, while GameSpot scored it as a 8.0 “Great”).  The biggest fault that reviewers agreed upon was that it seemed too short, and a longer visit in this archetypical gamer universe was wished for.  Now that’s a complaint any developer would like to hear!  It was released for both Windowsand Macintosh platforms, and played the same on either one.  Also, a DVD version was released in 1998, which also included the full version of Zork: Nemesis as an added bonus.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Never forget who is the boss of you. ME!  I am the boss of you!“  Combining the visual appeal of Zork: Nemesis with the humor of the original series, Zork: Grand Inquisitor was a laudable addition to the Zork milieu, and certainly a worthy entry into this Game of the Week series.  Bluntly put, this game is well-worth a playthrough, especially if you are a fan of the Zork series!

Magisterrex has been gaming since the days of Pong and still owns a working Atari 2600. He tends to ramble on about retro games, whether they be board games, video games or PC games.  If you’re into classic old school gaming check out his blog here

Hearts of Iron The Card Game Review by Honorabili

Hearts of Iron The Card Game is an online card game that you can play for free through any device that can connect to the internet and supports Flash. This free to play card game is based on the series of hardcore strategy games also by Paradox Interactive by the same name – Hearts of Iron. If you don’t know what Hearts of Iron is, think of it as a macro strategy game similar to Europa Universalis but about World War 2. Both the original Hearts of Iron and Europe Universalis are not for anything but the most hardcore strategy gamers. Whereas Hearts of Iron is about World War 2, simulating history, the Europa Universalis games are about simulating history from the dark ages up til almost colonial times. Think of them like Risk and Axis and Allies but 20 times more detailed.

Anyways, back to the card game! The link for the game is the following http://hoitcg.com/hoi/index.php. You sign up for the game by using your existing Paradox Interactive (forum) account. If for some reason (and it happened to me with Firefox), the sign up button is not generating the site correctly for you, click here to sign up.

In the game you take the role of the ruler of either the USA, Germany, or USSR (Comintern). Each faction has its own benefits. The Germans are all about their heavy tanks (tougher to kill) and killing other units outright but also have the most expensive units to build. The USA is all about artillery and airpower but have lousy tanks and poor organization and leadership. The Russians are all about throwing waves of cheap infantry as cannon fodder at the enemy (think Enemy At The Gates) but have lousy airpower. Each of the three different factions have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The game is divided into different phases. In the first one, you draw up to three cards and if you don’t then you have infrastructure points which you can use to build factories. In this same phase, if you have enough of the right kind of factory you can use this time to build artillery, airplanes, infantry, tanks, or fortifications as well as learning new field strategies. In the next phase, alternating per turn, one of the players attacks first. The other player gets to pick which units will defend. If they cannot defend (basically because they don’t have enough infantry) then usually the other player gains a certain amount of victory points. The game ends when one of the player gets 7 victory points. Just so you have an idea, a game usually takes me at least an hour when I fight to the bitter end.

Units, like in many card games, counter each other and certain units are good at attacking in certain ways. Combat is divided into three phases: artillery, battle, and close combat. You have to attack or not attack based on what your strategy is. Sometimes not attacking will do more damage in a later phase of the combat but usually the combat gets really nasty and a lot of stuff dies. Sometimes you won’t be able to attack because one of your units got pinned or damaged or outright killed by an enemy unit. Be sure to read their cards carefully before committing to a certain death strategy!

I’m still learning the game myself so I recommend reading the strategy guide found here if my explanation doesn’t make much sense to you.

The game is for the most part pretty well balanced. The only part I found bullshit was when a bunch of German Panzers shot down some of my airplanes which they shouldn’t have been able to do unless they were specifically anti-air cannon tanks.

The game is free and if you play 7 games per week they give you a free booster of 1st edition (regular) cards. Like many card games, each booster contains a majority of common cards, some uncommons, and one rare card. If you feel confident in the game, rather than play casual practice games, they offer a pvp mode where you can spend tickets (a mode to access special pvp games) and you can compete with another player in a best two out of three match game where the winner wins a booster for the Hidden & Dangerous expansion to the card game. These are very powerful cards. Again, I recommend doing this only when you become really good at the game and/or have a badass deck that makes even Stalin cry.

Overall, since the game for the most part is well designed, although it will have a hard learning curve for people that don’t play many card games, so I give this game a review score of 8 out of 10. Some stuff can be added like a friend’s list and some small balance issues. I will update the score if this game grows. Go play it! Oh and if you want to play against me, look for Honorabili

Akkanvader is a Space Invaders clone made by Taito and released in 1995. It is kind of the Japanese lollypop version of the game being all colorful, cute and all, but it is also fun. So you can select from a wide range of characters and each has a different style and ship that you used in the game. However, it doesn’t matter story wise which you select as they all act the same way.

You have five main worlds as well as sub-stages, all very animated with tons of colors of the enemies and the background. A result of this is the game becomes more difficult because you end up having trouble figuring what’s going on.

The game starts out retro style with little colors and looks a lot like the original invaders, but from there more color comes into play and soon you are fighting all types of strange characters never seen in the original game.

Now some other changes with this game is the ability to charge your laser king of like you would in R-type or Megaman. This really is only useful for bosses which is something else that Akkanvader brings to the table.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Expect to see all kinds of weird enemies and even weirder boss as seen in our screenshot gallery below. I guess this is just to make sure you remember it’s a Japanese game.

In 1992, a follow-up to the original Star Wars NES video game was released, this time based on the next film in the series, The Empire Strikes Back. This entry in the Wars-related video gaming canon was notable for retaining some of the elements of its predecessor while departing in some significant ways as well.

Gameplay

Much like the first 8-bit Star Wars game on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Empire Strikes Back primarily follows the protagonist Luke Skywalker in his efforts against the evil Empire, while featuring some play appearances from other characters from the films as well

This time, rather than starting in the sandy deserts of Tatooine, Luke begins in the icy expanses of the planet Hoth. Skywalker even begins riding a tauntaun, a kangaroo-like creature, just as in the movie, that you can choose to jettison at any point or continue as far as you wish with it beneath you. Play control remains similar to the first game, with the A button jumping, the B button firing, and Force Powers becoming eventually available via a selection menu screen brought up by pressing Start. One key addition in the controls is the capacity of the blaster weaponry to fire in any of the eight basic directional pad directions (the four cardinals plus diagonals), which although adds an intriguing element of firepower, also seems to give the game designers reason to include crazy-difficult enemies that ebb and dive in chaotic patterns and perhaps take too many shots to kill.

While navigating vast levels, enjoying the occasional cutscene and almost-cutscene, switching vehicles from beasts of burden to outright spaceships, engaging in precision jumping, and pressing the fire button as rapidly as possible, the player is working toward the ultimate goal of confronting Darth Vader in an epic lightsaber duel. In order to get there, crazy-awesome instincts, reaction time, intuition, and other gameplay gifts will be necessary, as this game offers a few less continues than the original and seems markedly more difficult.

Graphics

The visuals of this game are of high quality, showcasing the true capabilities of the 8-bit NES home console as it neared the end of its supported run before being eclipsed by the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). As such, the animations are smooth, the enemies are daunting, and there are some noteworthy on-screen appearances that feature head shots of the major players in the Wars mythos. Within the first minute of playing, the player will encounter messages from Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi. As the lasers fly and the space-oriented battles emerge into view, this video game makes it clear that it is aiming for a cinematic experience.

Sound

The music, though recognizable in portions, is hit-or-miss. The original score for the Star Wars films, including that for Empire Strikes Back, is among the best in cinema history, yet the digital translation here is thin. Had one not had any attachment to Star Wars, it would take a rather skilled ear to recognize anything special in the digitized tones. The sound effects, too, are a tad generic and overpowering each other at points, with one key exception: This game does feature some nice voice effects, impressive in their historic context of early video game lore.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Originality

This was the second and final Star Wars game released on the NES, and for some reason, it feels like it takes a step backward. Maybe it is the slightly more linear gameplay, the seemingly increased challenge, or an intangible “feel” that separates it from the original, but this game is not as fun as the previous. As a two-dimensional platformer, it is decent at best, and eclipsed by many earlier titles from other developers. Some of the portions of the gameplay that are not taking place in a side-scrolling environment are nice, but do not detract from the title’s primary fault: Its immense difficulty. The characters die very easily, there are even more “cheap shots” than the previous Star Wars game, and some inexplicable quirks are in place. For example, in the Hoth ice cave, the wampa monsters (in the film, the wampa is a bigger-than-man, hulking, roaring, imposing Yeti-like animal) are smaller than Luke yet nonetheless pose a significant threat as they nimbly hop over to maul and claw at him. Taking down an AT-AT may be a great experience, but the film-turned-game nabs just two stars out of five.

Eric Bailey is a retro gamer on a crazy quest to write a quality review for every single American-released NES video game over at NintendoLegend.com.

Angry Birds (2010)
By: Rovio  Genre: Puzzle  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Android  First Day Score: 108,400 (single stage best)
Also Available For: PC (forthcoming), iPhone/iPod, Symbian

You know, the progress of mobile communication technology really has been remarkable. After many years of refusal to conform, I finally had to yield and buy my first mobile phone, and even to this day I’m only on my third phone. I had no intention of ever using any of them to play videogames and, were it not for a quirk of fate, I’d still be using my second phone and continuing to not play games on it! Through much of this time, however, I had been watching, with a certain degree of envy, admittedly, the evolution of the iPhone as a legitimate gaming platform, yet no single game tempted me enough to take the plunge. Until this one.

Actually that’s not true. I still don’t own an iPhone, despite trying to get one almost purely to play this. I knew from the first moment I saw a shot of this that I wanted to play it, so I found it frustrating that I was apparently unable to. Then, with the aforementioned quirk of fate, my phone was broken. Since it was too old to be fixed or replaced, I was instead given a state-of-the-art (for about five minutes) Android phone for which I found out Angry Birds was due for release. Hooray! Even better, when I was finally able to download it, it was free! This in itself made me very happy, but after all this waiting, was the game actually any good, or had I built it up so much for myself that I was in for a disappointment?
Like most puzzle games, the concept behind Angry Birds is a simple one which doesn’t really need a detailed backstory. Suffice to say, some evil (and for some reason, green) pigs have stolen the eggs belonging to a group of birds. This has understandably made the birds angry who have decided to channel their anger into a direct assault on the pigs who have barricaded themselves in and around various strongholds. It is then your job to launch the birds at the pigs using a large slingshot with the eventual aim of defeating them and reclaiming the treasured eggs. This is achieved either by direct contact, or by causing nearby structures to collapse onto them. Those pesky pigs have built some elaborate defenses though, so it won’t be easy!

According to the walkthough on the Rovio website, the game consists of five ‘themes’ each comprising of twenty-one levels, but there have been other sets of levels made available to download so the exact number is hard to say, but it’s a lot! Each one features a pig, or pigs, on the right of the level and your slingshot and quota of birds on the left, and there’s usually various obstacles between the two. The structures the pigs are usually protected by are made of glass, wood, or stone, each of which is obviously progressively harder to break through, and are more often than not made of strategic combinations of several materials. To break down/through these structures you have six different types of bird at your disposal.

The first bird you’ll use is the red one which is a tough sonuvvabitch but doesn’t really do much beyond collide with whatever you fire it at. Next up is the smaller blue bird which will split into three separate birds in mid-air when you touch the screen. After this helpful fellow you’ll encounter the yellow, and possibly angriest of all the birds. A tap of the screen while he’s in flight will see him increase in speed and plummet kamikaze-style in a straight line, causing greater damage. Next is the heavy black bird who self-destructs in a powerful explosion after he makes contact with any structure. Soon after him you’ll meet the white bird who, with a tap of the screen, will drop an egg bomb. Last but not least is the green bird who can reverse his course in mid-air. Each level gives you a pre-set quota of these birds that you can use to defeat all the pigs on that level, and careful planning is needed to make best use of their abilities.

The pigs have a few tricks up their sleeves too though. The smaller ones barely need a touch to be defeated, but the larger ones are tougher, some of whom are equipped with helmets and armour! Some are so tough you’ll need help to best them. There are often strategically positioned rocks or other objects, for example, which, with a well-placed bird strike, can fall and cause an extensive chain-reaction of destruction. Some levels even have carefully placed boxes of TNT which can be ignited with the strike of either a bird or object of any other kind. The pigs don’t seem to care though, and sit there looking at you, blinking, sometimes grunting, and laughing when your attempts to reach them fail! Completed levels will give you a Star Rating out of three depending on your points, which can be earned for destruction of structures as well as a 10,000 point bonus for any unused birds.

The first thing I noticed about Angry Birds is how slickly presented everything is. You can breeze through all the menu screens and suchlike in a flash, which might not sound like much but it really is a breath of fresh air, with many games these days, mobile or otherwise, having clumsy interfaces and long loading times. Here, if you fluff up a level, two touches of the screen and a similar number of seconds later and you’ll have restarted it! The visual style used here appeals to me a great deal too. Whilst obviously far from the pinnacle of modern technology, it suits the game perfectly and is very easy on the eye. There’s even some amusing cut-scenes! Whilst there’s no in-game music, the sound is also of a decent quality, with many amusing sound effects befitting the style of the game, and several catchy tunes and ditties on the various screens between levels. All the flashy front-ends in the world can’t disguise a sucky game, but luckily Angry Birds is anything but that.

The best games on a platform as limited as a mobile phone are ones creatively programmed to make the best use of its unique features, and it’s here that Angry Birds excels. The game was created originally for the iPhone but, since Android devices use near-enough identical technology, it works just as well here. The touch-screen controls are simple and precise and I don’t think it’s possible for the game to work any better. The physics are spot-on too, with partial destruction of some structures leaving the remains teetering and swaying, sometimes taking thirty seconds or more to finally collapse. This is one of those games that you can play for five minutes but often end up playing for hours on end, constantly adjusting your birds trajectory until you get exactly the shot (and ensuing destruction) you want! Even if you manage to finish all the levels on offer, there’s still the challenge of achieving a three star rating for each of them. Angry Birds is such a simple concept but it’s supremely playable and unbelievably addictive. I guess I’m a bit of a sucker for these silly games – I was exactly the same with LocoRoco for the PSP – but everyone should at least give this one a try. Android owners don’t even need to pay for the privilege. Ready. Aim. Fire!

RKS Score: 9/10

Click here to view the embedded video.

Retro King Simon is a 36 year old guy from England, and likes lots of stuff, including retro videogames, movies, and anime. You can check out his blog here – Red Parsley.

I’m always mixed when it comes to retro remakes, especially if it was a game I really used to enjoy.

Choplifter was one of those games I never thought caught on like it should.  While it had a popular run on the old Apple II computers, I really got into the 1985 version from Sega and it’s counterpart on the fledgling Sega Master System.  Sadly, these versions never really came during a time or place that allowed a large audience to see them, forever making a solid game a bit of a footnote to the 8-bit gaming era.

Choplifter HD was released Tuesday for around $15 on the XBox 360, PlayStation Network and PC.  While a big fan of the original, I’m mixed on this modern-day remake.

The Good

We’ll start here.  The good part of Choplifter HD is that they didn’t try to re-invent the wheel.  After a few silly tutorial sessions the game really does feel like Choplifter should feel like in your hands, and the basic point of the game should come naturally to anyone who knows the deal here.

There is a good mix of different choppers and a great amount of detail within each level.  There seems to be one hell of a war going on here and you are flying through the thick of it while on your missions to rescue hostages and airlift folks to safety.  The chopper pilots are a little chatty with decent humor.

The Bad

The controls leave a little to be desired.  I really didn’t expect to have to use every button on my controller for a Chopliftergame and as a fan of the orginals my hands simply did not adjust to the extra steps to turn directions and fly around quickly.

You can’t lay down a steady barrage of fire, either, something else I loved to do in the 1985 arcade version.  Your machine guns overheats and leaves you without any offensive weapon if you try.  While I understand this is realistic, I didn’t grab this game for realism.  I would have preferred a fast-paced shoot-em-up weapon like on the Choplifter helicopter from my youth.

The Ugly

The hostages and enemy soldiers are simply too small.  I understand the word “HD” is in the title but this shouldn’t mean I need a 60″ plasma to see the people.  I squished way too many of the people I’m supposed to be rescuing simply because I couldn’t see them on a fairly large HD set.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Bottom Line

Choplifter HD feels enough like the original to give old school fans a thrill but still tries to add too many new bells and whistles to a concept that really doesn’t need them.  I would have preferred more of an old-school side-scrolling shooter without so many objectives and controls like the one that used to suck the quarters out of my pocket at the skating rink in the late 1980s.

A fun game that is a casual play at best and should maybe be priced slightly lower.  As much as the name Choplifter still makes my ears perk up, I simply can’t see myself spending near as much time on this as I would have liked.

Patrick Scott Patterson has been a gamer since 1981, acting as a writer, technician and world record holder on several game titles. He has appeared numerous times in the yearly editions of Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition. In addition to writing here, Patterson has also written for Yahoo!, Twin Galaxies, VGEVO and Gameroom Magazine, and is always looking for unique and positive news to report from the video gaming world.

One of the more interesting pirates out is Kart Fighter. What else can you ask for? Mario characters kicking each others asses! You can play as Peach, Mario, Koopa, Bowser, and many many more! No kidding! What makes this different from the other crappy pirate fighters is the Mario characters. They also have the wrong names(at least some of them do). The game is quite simple if you have played these flawed fighters you can find the super move that will always hit the enemy and prevent them from doing anything against it.

There is not much more to say about this game, it’s quite easy but surely one you have to try out mainly because of the weird factor it contains. You can also get this game via-reproduction which is cheaper than finding the pirate cart which usually goes for 30 plus but I could be wrong. You can play this game two player which will go great if you are high or drunk or both, I’m sure it’ll give you a good laugh. The music is also just out of this world, it’s like they change some notes of Mario songs to make it sound different. I have a theory about this game, it was made to be mario kart for the NES but they must have gone through some programing problems and what’s the cheapest alternative? To use the crappy fighting engine other games such as Master Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat use and you have a “new” game.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Famicomfreak is a classic gaming writer and collector you can view his main blog here – Retro Gaming Life

It can be argued that The 7^th Guest was responsible for the popularization of the CD-ROM format, as it predates the other pioneering CD-ROM superseller, MYST.  The atmospheric horror/puzzle hybrid was a smash hit at a time when CD-ROM drives were not ubiquitous across the PC gaming world.  With over 2 million copies of the game sold, CD-ROM manufacturers noted that their sales quadrupled in the aftermath of this game’s release.

The game begins with the background story of how Henry Stauf went from a tramp to a rich toymaker. From there, the player finds himself trapped in an ominous-looking mansion with six other “guests” trying to piece together what has happened to them.  Their host, the enigmatic and wicked Henry Stauf, challenges them to a game with the winner achieving his or her heart’s desire.  But you are not an invited guest, and the game you must win is for possession of your very soul.  Scenes of what has already transpired are shown to you as you solve each of the puzzles, culminating in a final confrontation with Stauf himself, all done in a first-person perspective.

This was a game like no other before it.  First, it was BIG.  At a time when game companies were packing 1.44 MB of code on multiple 3.5” diskettes, The 7^th Guestclocked in over an astounding 770 MB on two CDs.  The reason for that massive size was the full-motion video used to propel the player through the mystery, as well as the prologue and epilogue of each puzzle.  With superior production quality and professional actors, the game’s cut-scenes were enjoyable to watch.

The 7^th Guest is legendary for the hype that surrounded its development.  From the first demo shown to the gamer masses during the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in 1992, the anticipation building to its eventual release in 1993 seemed to indicate either that The 7^th Guest would be an amazing game or a bitter disappointment.  Judging by the sales this title achieved, “disappointment” was not a word used to describe The 7^th Guest.

The game’s creators, Rob Landeros (a graphic artist) and Graeme Devine (a programmer for Virgin MasterTronics) followed the success of The 7^th Guest with a sequel, The 11^th Hour.  Although their company, Trilobyte, was initially flush with cash from the success of The 7^th Guest, increasing tensions from divergent visions of the company’s future and spiraling production costs exhausted their funds, and eventually their partnership sundered.  However, in 2004, another gaming company, Lunny Interactive, announced the reunion of both Devine and Landeros and the imminent development of the long-awaited third game in the series, The Collector. Six years later, the game is merely another vaporware legend, which is really unfortunate, as the gaming world could always use a little more Stauf to play with!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Magisterrex has been gaming since the days of Pong and still owns a working Atari 2600. He tends to ramble on about retro games, whether they be board games, video games or PC games.  If you’re into classic old school gaming check out his blog here

Lost Vikings, The (1992)
By: Silicon & Synapse / Interplay  Genre: Platform / Puzzle  Players: 1-2  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega MegaDrive / Genesis
Also Available For: SNES, GameBoy Advance, Amiga, CD32, PC

Now that I think about it, the sub-genre of platform/puzzle games, on which I am rather keen, is a little obscure as genres go, but the combination of two older and exceedingly popular types of game has proved to be a fantastic partnership. Examples have taken many weird and wonderful forms over the years and one of the most interesting (though not necessarily best) is of the sort that includes multiple characters with differing abilities. This was of course made popular by the great Lemmings. Dozens of similar games soon appeared and most were average at best, but The Lost Vikings is a pretty rare example of another game taking that premise, putting a different slant on it, and actually succeeding.

Starring as the multiple characters in this game are the Vikings of the title who are indeed lost. Actually, ‘captives’ might be a more appropriate word as our three Nordic friends have apparently been abducted by the curiously-named Tomator, emperor of the alien Croutonian Empire, who has been collecting unique and interesting specimens for his intergalactic zoo. They obviously weren’t confined very effectively though as they immediately set out to escape their shackles. To do this you must guide them to the exit on each of the 41 levels (or 37 in the other versions) which are set over various themed worlds (through time, of course!). The first is apparently set within the Croutonian spaceship but others include an Egyptian one (obviously), Pre-Historic, and even toy/food-related ones (not sure what time-period it’s supposed to be though!).

Before I get carried away though, I’ve just realised how rude I’ve been by failing to introduce the stars of the show – the Vikings themselves! So, say hello to Erik the Swift, Baleog the Fierce, and Olaf the Stout! As you may have guessed, they each have unique abilities so you must use them all as a team to successfully finish each level. Erik can run and jump around the platforms and can also smash down certain walls by headbutting them, Baleog is equipped with a sword and bow (with infinite arrows) with which to battle the various enemies, and Olaf has a large shield which protects him (and indeed the others if they’re behind him) from enemies and hazards, and he can also raise it above his head and glide down from high places.

To complete a level you must succeed in guiding all three Vikings to its exit. On the first level this takes about one minute but as you go through the game the levels get larger and more complicated as you might expect. They are multi-tiered and most feature ladders, colour-coded keys/locks, switches, and various monstrous and not-so-monstrous enemies. As you progress you’ll encounter more and more obstacles and features such as spring-pads, moving platforms, and even a device that inflates our heroes allowing them to float! The enemies take many forms usually related to the environment you’re in. The pre-historic world, for example, features vicious cavemen, small dragons, and… umm… snails. There’s also numerous guns and other projectile-firing devices around, and a touch from any of these things, or indeed falling too far, will cost the unfortunate Viking one of his three health points.

Contact with some of the hazards found in the levels, such as spikes or electric forcefields, can cause instant death too, so careful planning is required for the most part, rather than charging around recklessly. Fortunately, hit points are replenished each stage and there are also a few items that can help you such as various foods to replenish your energy and smart bombs to clear the screen of enemies. These items can be transferred from one Viking to another too, depending on who’s most in need, which further emphasises the teamwork aspect of the game which is so prevalent. In fact, in some versions of the game (including this one) it’s possible for you and a friend to control more than one Viking at once.

As I mentioned earlier, after the success of Lemmings there was a good few games released that tried their own take on the ‘multiple characters with differing abilities’ formula, but in most cases it either seemed unnecessarily tacked-on or that the developers put too much emphasis on it, forgetting to create decent stages for them to explore in the process! Luckily, Silicon & Synapse (who would later become Blizzard Entertainment of Warcraft fame) got the balance just right with this amusing adventure. The levels are well designed for the most part and before each one there’s some humorous banter between the three Vikings (via speech bubbles). They all have unique abilities but they are simple too, and all vital for successful progress through the game’s ever-tougher levels.

Aesthetically, The Lost Vikings is pretty average. It doesn’t really need flashy graphics and, whilst there is a lot of colour and some nice backgrounds and foregrounds, it’s certainly not ground-breaking either. It’s the same with the sound – effects are kept to a minimum and the music suits the game well enough but isn’t particularly memorable. As with all games of this type though, it’s other aspects of the game’s design that counts, such as level and character design. Happily, near enough every aspect of the gameplay is spot-on. The Vikings themselves are appealing (helped by their entertaining chatter) and are easy to control, and the difficulty curve is reasonably well-balanced too. The only problem is that there’s something of a ‘trial and error’ aspect to some sections of the game, and if you make a mistake and kill a Viking it’s all the way back to the start of the level, and they can get pretty big and complicated later on! Still, each level has a password and it is addictive, with the unique abilities of each Viking making for an interesting and fairly originally-designed game that’s well worth a look.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Retro King Simon is a 36 year old guy from England, and likes lots of stuff, including retro videogames, movies, and anime. You can check out his blog here – Red Parsley.

RKS Score: 8/10

Airwolf was a 1980′s television series that inspired a licensed video game developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Acclaim and released in 1989. Following the mission-oriented adventures of Hawke and his Airwolf military helicopter, the protagonist must undergo several missions in order to defeat the FIRM.

Gameplay

You follow a series of missions, each of them usually consisting of rescuing hostages or destroying enemy fighters. Before each stage, a map is shown, marking locations where you can land the Airwolf craft, including where to land for fuel and where to pick up hostages. It also shows the likely location of enemy aircraft as well.

During the mission, you fly about in a rough first-person flight-simulation mode, with the horizon awkwardly lilting back and forth in jerky angles for every adjustment. You can shoot opposing units while tracking your location on the panel display, which also shows the location of the hostages, fuel, etc. When you approach one of these target sites, it switches to a side-view landing screen, where you must carefully guide the Airwolf copter between obstructive structures and softly land without crashing and burning. Doing so at a fuel station reloads your fuel, obviously, whereas landing at the sight of a hostage shows the thankful person boarding your Airwolf vehicle. Once you rescue the hostages, you exit the area and the mission is completed. Occasionally you destroy airfields. You can shoot incoming missiles and get credit for doing so at the end of a mission. Otherwise, that is pretty much it.

The gameplay, it must be noted, is notoriously repetitive and boring. It is playable, but the bland looks coupled with uninventive missions (put it this way: you rescue a lot of hostages) does not help to enhance any sort of appeal or replay value.

Graphics

Seeming to focus on connecting with the source material of the television show, the game features enormous close-up shots of characters and features (the Airwolf crest must been seen to be believed, and the pocketknife beside the glasses on the sheet of paper that missions get typed onto is a nice touch) between stages, emphasizing the looks of those details rather than the in-game graphics, which are rather crude. The weapon fire is generic geometric shapes, the enemy craft are ill-defined (though decent), and other than the needlessly complex-looking control panel, the entire background is separated into two colors: One for ground, the other for sky, and the colors change every level.

Sound

The Airwolf theme is present and intact, though likely unrecognized by most. The effects themselves are nondescript and average. Ho hum.

Originality

Some license games have some thought put into them (granted, sometimes too much), and some very little, and this seems to be a case of the latter. It is a simple flight simulator, but makes no effort to stretch beyond very basic mission-based dogfight land-the-craft gameplay.

Lots of license games for various pop-culture sources were created for the NES, to varying results. Some were overwrought and made, perhaps, needlessly complicated (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Cool World, etc.); others seemed to be more thoughtful and developed but a bit heavy on the challenge side (Die Hard, Fester’s Quest); while still others, among other categories, fell into the group that were sloppily made, lazily pushed to publication, and devoid of any interesting, redeeming qualities. Welcome to your homeland Airwolf, where you languish with a rating of one and a half stars out of five.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eric Bailey is a retro gamer on a crazy quest to write a quality review for every single American-released NES video game over at NintendoLegend.com.

Overall Score:
8 out of 10

Overview & Gameplay & Fun Factor & Replayability:

The game is a mix of the original Zelda, Terranigma (a lost SNES gem), Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, and Final Fantasy 6. Those are already all must-play games so imagine how great this game is. The gameplay is a lot like most of those games.

This is a hack and slash game that is a very special distinct style. The world just ended in a magical apocalypse and you’re one of the few survivors. Pretty much everybody you knew is dead and you’re trying to find a way to restore the world.

The game has a special style of its own. The world feels like an extreme fantasy world with the culture and civilization of the world looking like the old west. The music (see below) is a lot of folk, country, and electronic music and it reflects this. The game is original because there is a Narrator describing everything the main character The Kid does, feels, and thinks. This adds a lot of depth to what is otherwise a simple game (simple is NOT bad).

When I sat down to play this game, I figured I would do so and be done with it, not necessarily because I heard anything about this game other than seeing it came out, but rather because I bought a bunch of games on sale on Steam for Christmas. It was late on a Wednesday and I figured I’d play a quick game, beat it fast, and go to bed. By the time I thought it was 10:30 PM that maybe I should go eat something it was in reality 2:30 AM and my body was screaming at me that I was starving. This game is quite a lot of fun since action RPGs generally are that way. The narration keeps you engaged in the game. Not only that but since the game autosaves, you don’t pause to do that either. I give Fun Factor a score of 8 out of 10. Why that score? Well that’s because after a while the game does sort of become repetitive. Don’t get me wrong, the story is great and everything but when you replay the game the story is pretty much the same except when you get to the ending of the game and you have 4 different choices to make. I give Replayability a score of 6 out of 10. The game opens up different modes in which to play the game in after you beat it but I don’t feel like going through the story all over again, myself.

Difficulty & Difficulty Versatility:

You get to super customize how hard you want this game to be through the use of the Shrine building in the game. You can’t change it in real-time through the menu but you can go back to The Bastion and reconfigure which Gods to piss off, I mean pray for, determining how hard you want to make the enemies.

The default difficulty with no Shrine modifications was really easy for me. You can literally make this game NES-hard, and I’m talking about the original Megaman games level of difficulty. Since you can customize it so much, it’s up to you to make your own challenge. I give both the Difficulty and Difficulty Versatility scores of 10 out of 10. Don’t be a wimp!

Value:

I bought this game and the soundtrack on Steam for $10 during the holiday sale they have every year. I would say, I’d pay at most $15 for it (for the game alone), considering how good it is. It’s worth having played it at least once, sort of like Trine was to me.

Sound:

The sound effects are respectable and are often ques for whether you should dodge or shield yourself. The Narrator (Stranger) makes the game really engaging because he keeps the game flowing by describing what The Kid is thinking about as he continues on his quest, as well as tells you more about the history of the dead world. I give Sound a score of 10 out of 10. The narration really did it for me in making this game rise to a whole new level. This game could have easily have been made on DOS, Amiga CD32, Sega CD, or Playstation 1 but instead of using the CD technology of those systems to create something like this they tried to pack it with shitty video instead but I am getting sidetracked.

Music:

The music for this game is probably one of the best soundtracks for any game that came out in 2011. The music is a mix of folk, country, and electronic music. The general level music sounds a lot like the music from SNES action RPG games like the ones I mentioned before. There are specific folk and country songs that are so good that they are almost chilling to hear, especially with the way the action, the narration, and storyline mix along with their introduction.

The introduction of such music was perfectly made especially with the atmosphere of the game. You’re in a fantasy post-apocalypse world, so imagine getting to hear such beauty in the middle of death. Made me think of some of the best parts of Fallout or Final Fantasy 6.

Now most of the music in the game is the electronic SNES kind of music, I just wanted to post the best folk songs here especially since they’re sang so well and the lyrics are so relevant to this game.

The music kind of made me think of some of the music by Tom Waits, especially this song:

If you never heard of Tom Waits before, here is one of my favorite songs by him:

Anyways, the music for this game is TOP! I give the Music a score of 10 out of 10. The music makes you FEEL what’s going on. Rather than do some stupid cut scene that makes you have no interaction and makes it like a movie (the opposite of what a video game should be), you live the music as you play the game. A lot of BIG game developers have a lot to learn from this little game.

Stability/Reliability:

The game never crashed, not even while I alt-tabbed, running a bunch of stuff in the background. Stability/Reliability get a score of 10 out of 10. The music gets lower while in the menu and alt-tabbed but does not mute itself.

Controls:

You control The Kid with both keyboard and mouse (for the PC version). The controls are pretty self intuitive. You block with SHIFT and roll away from enemies with spacebar. The left mouse button does your melee attack (unless you change what weapon goes there) and right mouse controls your missile weapon (again unless you decided to have two melee weapons, which is not that smart). Q unleashes your super attack. The controls were great except that the game sometimes lags with some of the weapons kind of making them be useless to me (chaos launcher, sometimes the rifle) but you’ll identify them soon and I recommend you avoid those weapons. In fact, I recommend using the polearm, dual pistols, and pistol super skill all the time. I give Controls a score of 7 out of 10. Maybe it’s just the PC version that has that problem but I think they should have tested this game a little more in development and made sure all the weapons worked flawlessly.

Graphics & Performance:

Here is a game that’s so well put together it’s almost art-like. The character drawings will remind you of playing Terranigma, Secret of Mana, and Secret of Evermore on the SNES, only more polished sort of like having the same kind of graphics as games from the Warcraft 2 era or maybe like Revenant but having much higher resolution. The game has its own style of art, sort of like a Korean anime style. I liked the drawings of the characters and cutscene drawings. For a small game this was really great, blend all that with the narration and music and you have something that is superior to the original games that inspired its style. Graphics get a score of 10 out of 10. A game doesn’t need to be 3D in order for it to be eye-candy.

Performance was nearly flawless, only having a few minor hickups that didn’t have too much of a penalty in gameplay. I give Performance an 8 out of 10. I do run a lot of stuff even while I game since I multitask work stuff a lot. You could see minor lag here and there but if you run with nothing in the background you should be fine.

Conclusion:

The game is nearly perfect except for the few flaws that I mentioned. It feels good to have a game that makes you feel something. Feeling good in a Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Final Fantasy 6, and Psychonauts way is something more games should have. Remember, technology “improving” is not always a good thing. Casablanca > Transformers 3, for example. Empire Strikes Back > everything else SW that came out after, except for KOTOR and Old Republic.

This game is worth playing, at least once. Live the experience that Bastion is!