Wednesday, December 26, 2012

World Ten: Favourite Games of 2012

As a way to polish off the year, I wanted to highlight my favourite games of 2012. These are in no particular order, bear in mind...because all of these games are fuckin' amazing and you should be sure to check them out! Hope you enjoy, and let's get to it!

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Monday, December 10, 2012

Quick Thoughts: Nintendo Wii U

Very recently, the Nintendo Wii U was released, for which I placed a preorder a couple of months ago when they were first available. I've been playing that system a lot recently, obviously. It's a brand new toy after all, and it's also generally a pretty damn sweet system so far! Here are some small blurbs about the system and some of the games I've been playing recently for it:

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Chiptunes: EarthBound Extravaganza!

EarthBound for the Super Nintendo has a pretty kickass soundtrack, particularly the battle music...and a bunch of it has been rolling around in my head for the last few days. Therefore, I'm going to get it stuck in your heads too! You can thank me later!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Gaming Grads!!!

Myself and a friend have gathered up some gear and decided to have some fun spreading our horrible personalities across the vast plains of YouTube. We're basically gonna play some manageable games together while ripping on each other's gaming performances, make cracks about the game content, and generally just have a damn good time and (hopefully) be entertaining for you people as well!

We just uploaded our very first video for our playthrough of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards this evening. If you like it or are easily manipulated, be sure to subscribe and get the latest updates on the channel! Share it with your friends and spread the gaming joy!

Check out our channel right here!

Enjoy it, and if you have any comments be sure to post them. We have tons of games to choose from and can likely get our hands on more...any suggestions are welcome!

- Adam

What's the deal with Resident Evil 6?

Resident Evil 6 came out just a while ago, at the beginning of October. At first I was pretty apprehensive about picking it up, because the folks at Capcom have been a bunch of assholes lately. They've made some horrible choices with DLC distribution, rehashed multiple games multiple times for a quick dollar, and canceled every single Megaman project under the sun, seemingly throwing the Blue Bomber to the curb. Resident Evil 6 looked okay to me, but had gotten some very negative press when the demo first arrived.

I kept an eye on things however, and lots of good information started to crop up. Word of a 30-hour campaign spanning 3 different characters started floating around, making this the largest main-line Resident Evil game to date. Afterwards, a 4th campaign was mentioned as well, adding more and more to the meat of the game. The controls were apparently tightened up, some camera issues were fixed, and overall it seemed like this game was in good shape after a fairly rocky start. I decided to pick it up...that's a lot of game content and well-worth a purchase.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Item Acquired: 7 NES games!

I got lucky last week. I happened to go to ye olde Entertainment Overload on Tuesday to check out what sorts of classic titles they had in stock, and it just so happened that I arrived on a day where they received a massive shipment of NES games! What a fuckin' score! I managed to expand my NES library by 7 games, some of which you'll recognize and others you may not. Onwards to the round-up!


Wednesday, October 31, 2012

World Ten: Freaky Enemies in Video Games

Been a little while, and I did intend to do more Hallowe'en content than just this post...but shit happens and things come up, so I'm afraid this'll have to do. I'm gonna sound off on my top 10most disturbing enemies from video games...ones that are grotesque, unnerving, or just plain stressful to even be around. As video games have become visually more impressive, more and more freaky critters have started to sprout up, so don't be surprised if this W10 entry contains a lot of material from more current game series!

Let's dive right in, shall we?

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Chiptunes: Xenoblade Chronicles - Colony 9

Here's another quick entry with a sweet melody that frequently comes back into my skull. In addition to being a fucking phenomenal game, Xenoblade must have just about the most memorable soundtrack in a long time, and one of the standouts for me is Colony 9's theme. It's the first major area of the game, so luckily I'm not spoiling anything by posting the music! You also get 2 for the price of 1 this time around, since there are day and night themes for most of the musical compositions in the game!





There you have it! Enjoy the music, and be sure to check out more of Xenoblade's soundtrack if you find the time. There isn't a single bad tune in the game, so you can't really go wrong!

Coming up in the near future: what better way to blog in the month of October than to write up a World Ten of freaky-ass monsters? Other various Hallowe'en-ish content will surface as well!

Keep gaming!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Chiptunes: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

Figured I'd start a new feature! I have a couple of reasons for this:

a) It will keep me blogging, even in small amounts when I'm very busy or stressed (i.e. now).

b) I absolutely love video game music, and Chiptunes will let me share cool tracks that've been stuck in my head lately. Hopefully these tunes will find a warm place within your skulls as well!

Here's a cool melody that I've been humming for the last week and a half. Mad Forest, from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NES).



Enjoy the tune, and keep gaming!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Just a quick mention...

Today I noticed that my blog breached the 20,000 view mark! Thanks a lot for reading my shitty writing and/or humouring me!

Seriously though, I hope you're all finding the content on this site fun and interesting, and hopefully learning a few things about classic games as well! If you have any suggestions be sure to leave a comment either here or on the DtC Facebook page. Also, if you know anyone who might take an interest in my blog, be sure to link them here!

Item Acquired: 7 NES games!

I've been extremely busy lately, and that's probably not going to change anytime too soon...so for now, the most I can update you guys with is a list of classic NES games I've recently tracked down and purchased and some quick descriptions of them:

Friday, August 31, 2012

In Retrospect: The Battle of Olympus


Of the classic NES games that I never had but absolutely loved, The Battle of Olympus really stands out to me. When I was younger, one of my friends owned this hidden gem. We started it a few times, but he was one of those people who got frustrated at video games and would start screaming and throwing stuff around to the point where it was actually frightening, or would turn a game off as soon as he started to lose, so we never managed to get far. Later on in life though, he managed to mellow out a little bit and we finally got through the game together. After that, I borrowed it from him and played through it a few more times, absolutely loving everything about the game. I've always been awed by the structures and ruins of ancient Greece, the various (awesome) mythical beasts of Greek legend, and the heroes that arose to smash them into dust.

So for a person like myself, what isn't there to like about The Battle of Olympus? Judging a book by the cover (or a cartridge by its artwork) yielded nothing to dislike about this game whatsoever. There were Greek statues and columns surrounded by badass-looking serpents! If that's not an instant win, I don't know what is! Luckily, like the cover art, the guts of this game also happen to be fantastic.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Item Acquired: Lots of awesome stuff!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything substantial...and today, that won't change. However, here's a quick rundown on what I've gotten my hands on lately!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

When interests collide

Today I found a neat link to an interview with the creators of the classic shoot 'em up series known as R-Type. R-Type has always been one of my favourite side scrolling shooter franchises...I find it's at just the right difficulty, controls and looks great, and also incorporates some really interesting game mechanics. The coolest mechanic within the R-Type series is the Force item. It's an addition to your ship that you can upgrade with different powers, directly launch at enemies, and also place on either the back or front of your ship, depending on where you feel you need more firepower or cover.

The main thing that drives me besides video gaming is entomology. I love insects and have worked with them and around them for almost 5 years, and started taking a strong interest in them around 8 years ago as I was working through my undergraduate degree in Zoology. In particular, I developed a fondness for beetles...they're just so damn cool and diverse! You may be asking yourself why I'm mentioning this in the same article as R-Type. Well, it turns out that the main inspiration for the Force item in the R-Type series was, in fact, a type of beetle! A dung beetle, to be precise. Here's the excerpt and photos from this portion of the translated interview:

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A comparison of the Force and a dung beetle with its payload. 
 

ABIKO (Designer): It started out as a joke, but our idea for the Force came from the dung beetle. We were thinking of a system where you wouldn’t power up your own ship, but would instead power up the ball of dung. We wanted something where two players could play simultaneously within the same screen and fight together, basically. Our programmer AKIO is a hardcore Gradius player, so we were very conscious of the existence of Gradius. If we were going to make a horizontal STG, we knew it would get compared to Gradius, so we were thinking about what we could do differently.

By the time we were asked to start coding, there had been many revisions and changes to the original game design. For example, we originally wanted to make the Force capable of deployment in 4 positions on your ship: front, back, top, and bottom. But it turned out to be too difficult to program, so we left it only front and back. The powerups changed almost completely too. At first we had typical STG weapons like a 3-way shot, but we felt that this wouldn’t distinguish our game enough from Gradius, so we added the reflecting laser. That was a real pain to code. [Laughs]

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If you're interested, you can read the rest of the interview here! There are some neat little tidbits about the R-Type series that I never had any idea about...such as what the hell the "R" in the title stands for!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

August happenings!

Hey everyone,

There are two links that are currently keeping me intrigued and will continue to do so until the end of the month. Figured I'd relay them quickly!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Thrill of the Hunt

You may have recently heard about a massive collection of video games in Paris that contained complete, factory-sealed collections for the NES and Sega Genesis, among other systems. This giant trove of nostalgia wound up auctioning off for about...oh, over 1 million dollars and was purchased by a fellow Canadian. This is all pretty cool stuff...it would be amazing to have a full collection for even any one single system, let alone multiple, and I'd personally love to one day acquire a full NES game collection. Obviously this would involve a lot of cash, but I like to think that everyone's allowed to have one expensive hobby.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Oh, and one more thing...

Defend the Classics now has a page on Facebook! You can access it by clicking this hyperlinked text, or by checking out the updated Links to the Past section at the right side of the page.

SEND ME YOUR LIKES! SHOW YOUR FRIENDS!

World Ten: Unusual ways to finish off a boss

Hello all! I would like for you to bear with me on this post...apparently the Blog interface is changing around and, quite frankly, I don't like it. So I decided that in order to get used to this UTTER SILLINESS, I would throw up a World Ten entry. I haven't done one in a while, and I've come up with some (hopefully) interesting ideas for them lately.

Bosses are my favourite parts of video games, hands down. Good bosses can put your skill to the most brutal test, force you to learn a technique that vastly improves your methods, or function as a really cool plot device. As such, finishing off a boss is always rewarding, even if it's just a sigh of relief because you don't have to deal with the bastard anymore. That being said...there are some bosses out there in the video game world that are defeated in some pretty unconventional ways, some of which I figured I'd list off for your entertainment. These are in no particular order, but they're the first 10 that I thought of so I figured I'd give them the highlight. Let's dive in, shall we?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Item Acquired: 4 NES games!

Over the last couple of weeks, I've managed to get my hands on 4 new games for the NES collection! I managed to snag three of them from a vendor at a (relatively) local farmer's market when I was visiting some friends, while I snagged the final one just today. Let's take a look, shall we?

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Item Acquired: Chrono Trigger

My previous blog post described a few games that I managed to snag, with a bit of a small cliffhanger at the end. I’m sure all ten of you are just teetering on the edge of your fuckin’ seats in anticipation to find out what the heck it was that I also found during my NES game hunt. Well, I’ll show you:

Not bad!

That’s right, Chrono Trigger. This bad boy cost me 35 bucks, which is ridiculously cheap for a physical copy of Chrono Trigger, even one that’s not in the best of shape! Let me put it this way: I was always under the impression that in order to get my greasy nerd hands on a SNES cartridge of Chrono Trigger again, I would have to pay $120 to someone on eBay.

“Wait a second,” I’m sure you’re thinking. “What did he mean by ‘again’?”

Or maybe you’re not thinking that at all, but read ahead anyway!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Axiom Verge

I wanted to write something up about a sweet lookin' game that's slated to be coming out in 2013. Planned for release for the PC and XBox 360 as a downloadable title, Axiom Verge appears to be...fucking...amazing...*drool*

See for yourself!



Official trailer from the Axiom Verge website.

With a sweet retro graphical style and awesome-sounding music, this game seems to be hitting all the right notes with me and I may have peed a little when I first saw this video. The action looks tight and intense, and the atmosphere and setting appear to be absolutely unsettling and brooding in the best retro sci-fi way possible. The official site even states the following:

"Axiom Verge takes its inspiration from greats such as Blaster Master, Contra, Bionic Commando, Rygar, Cave Story, and, of course, Metroid."

Wow...so basically elements from six awesome games are all packed into this sweet little gem! Sign me up, cause I'm keeping an eye on this one, and you damn well should be, too...trust me. Once this game is safely in my hands, you can expect a thorough review of it. Of course, that won't be for a while since the release is a bit far off...but I'm already looking forward to writing it.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

E3 ROUNDUP!!!!!

This year's Electronics Entertainment Expo has come and gone, and with it came an initial peak of intense hype at first...followed by what seems to be a generally agreed-upon "Meh" afterwards. I was absolutely pumped for this year's E3. For starters, Nintendo was going to give us specifics on their new console, the Wii U, as well as a lineup of games that were on the slate for it. This alone was enough to get me riled up...just the thought of seeing what would come out of their conference, but of course there were other potential points of interest as well. Conferences were on the way from Microsoft, Sony, EA, and Ubisoft...and within all of those presentations, there had to be some amazing things!

Saturday, May 26, 2012

A Fixer-Upper

A couple of days ago, I swung by a local video game store to check out their selection. Since I just moved to a new town/apartment, I've been trying to at least get out and explore and see what the heck is around me...video game outlets included. I had checked this particular store out the week prior and saw that they had NES games, but their selection was limited at the time. This Friday however, I went back and had another look (since I wanted to pre-order a game and also look for my own copy of Shadows of the Damned) and to my happiness, I found two games that I was really interested in grabbing: Double Dragon and A Boy and His Blob.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Experience Points: Xenoblade Chronicles

I have been busy lately, but not only with Real Life (TM) stuff. A majority of my free time has been consumed, digested, and processed completely by a game called Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. My very life and soul has been taken into its body and used for nutrients to sustain it as it slowly creeps throughout the world, assimilating all into its being and converting them into something higher...inhuman.

Friday, May 11, 2012

In Defense: La-Mulana


FINALLY! I have returned from the depths of the Earth so that I can tell you about a game ABOUT entering the depths of the Earth...La-Mulana!

I had heard about La-Mulana a long while ago...maybe a couple of years, but had never had the ability to play it. For some reason my computers just wouldn't run it correctly and the graphics and everything looked all messed up, rendering it unplayable (get it? RENDERING? GRAPHICS? Ah whatever...). This drove me fucking insane, because from what I had heard, La-Mulana was one of the longest open world sidescrollers (MetroidVania style) to come out recently. I'd heard it was tough, with some very complex puzzle solving and confusion about where to go next, and to top it all off the entire game is created in the image of an 8-bit MSX game. Pretty awesome but alas, it was not to be. I got screwed out of it time and time again and just couldn't get it working...but FINALLY as of about 3 months ago, I found a way to play it and I did not come away disappointed.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Profound Sadness: Mistakes and Consequences

Just recently, I acquired a copy of Dr. Mario for the NES. Actually, that's incorrect...I RE-acquired a copy of Dr. Mario for the NES from a local vendor. My own copy was lost to me years ago due to an unfortunate occurrence that I am still trying to rectify to this day.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Games list updated!

I have updated the list of games that I've played with 19 new ones I've checked out. You can observe this disgusting tally of sadness here!

This brings my total up to 910 now, and I've probably forgotten a couple. Either way, pretty gross!

Friday, April 6, 2012

In Defense: Sine Mora

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, this is my first time writing up a blog post in a while so...if I'm a little bit outta practice then don't be surprised!

Sine Mora is latin for "without delay", which is basically a good estimate of how quickly you should invest in this sweet, sweet game. Just recently released as a downloadable title on the XBox Live Arcade, Sine Mora is a side-scrolling pseudo-bullet hell shooter with some cool elements to it, an amazing art style, and some of the most satisfying gameplay I've experienced in the genre for a long time. Sit down, and I shall tell you a tale...of vulgar Hungarian-speaking anthropomorphic animals that travel through time *majestic arm wave*.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

"Been a long time...comrade."

This is my guilty post. I haven't posted anything on this site since January as things have been pretty damn busy and there's been a lot of rushing around and I just haven't had the time to post anything lately. I tried to write up a La-Mulana review for you all a while ago, but decided to scrap it and start over because it just wasn't sounding too good. So you'll have to wait for that!

However, some news to report!

1) Over the course of the last month or so, this blog reached 10,000 pageviews! 12 grand now, to be exact. Sorta cool I guess...I don't reckon that's really too much in the grand scheme of things but it seems like a benchmark to me so I'm posting about it!

2) Just the other day, a local game vendor had a sweet sale on classic video games and I managed to pick up some gold. Specifically:

Dr. Mario (NES) - I had this originally...and then one of my friends lost it when we were kids, so it's good to have it back!
Shadowgate (NES) - A very cool first-person adventure/puzzle game that I always loved to rent when I was younger.
The Illusion of Gaia (SNES) - Well-made Zelda-ish game with a cool little storyline. Sort of an indirect sequel to Soul Blazer, and the precursor to Terranigma.
Alien 3 (SNES) - Technically I picked this up for one of my friends...but this is a sweet game. One of those prime examples of how games based on a movie or license actually used to be good.
Blackthorne (SNES) - A sidescroller by Blizzard (YEP, THOSE GUYS!) and Interplay which is sort of like if the Prince of Persia ran around with a shotgun and explosives and blew orcs away in a Warhammer-style universe.
Bnajo-Kazooie (N64) - FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK YEAH!

So I have some really good classic material to keep myself busy for a while, which is nice. I've already started playing Blackthorne and Shadowgate through, and man they're awesome games.

3) Sine Mora came out...last week? Or 2 weeks ago maybe? I have lost track of time, which is ironic since this is a game with a time manipulation mechanic. I will absolutely be writing up a review of this game...it's amazing!

4) I've also downloaded a freeware game called Doom Roguelike. It's simple as all hell but so addictive...I can't seem to stop playing it whenever I get a chance, getting a game in here or there and clearing a level or two. Check it out if you're into Roguelike games and haven't played DoomRL yet.

That's all for now, but rest assured I AM alive! As much as it seems like it, I have not given up on this blog just yet, and I look forward to putting out some content soon. Sine Mora will come next, and then I'll finally write up a review of La-Mulana. At this rate, the damn remake of it for WiiWare will be out before I write about the original one!

Take it easy, and keep gaming! Check back soon for updates!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Happy New Year, and other random stuff.

A quick post just to say happy new year to you very few people who check out my blog.  I hope that you've had a good holiday and that you're looking forward to 2012!  I've done some gaming over the holidays and will certainly be updating my blog very shortly with some new content...particularly a review of La-Mulana which I FINALLY managed to finish!

In the meantime, I just wanted to post links to a few graphics that caught my eye as of late:

Nintendo Anthology - A nifty art piece that contains over 300 different video game characters.  Although it says "Nintendo" anthology, there are other characters in this thing that aren't Nintendo-only.  It's pretty cool if you want to just scan through and see if you can find your favourite characters!  My only complaint is that Mike from StarTropics is missing...but alas, you can't win 'em all!

Ye Olde Mario World - A fuckin' sweet t-shirt design on SplitReason, depicting the overworld of Super Mario World as an old-style navigation map.  It's only in the voting stage right now, but it's gotten a lot of positive feedback.  I definitely plan on snagging this once it's available, whether it be a t-shirt or a poster design.  Submit your vote for it if you like the design!

Like I said, that review of La-Mulana will be coming up sometime shortly, so check back soon!