Reviews

Out Run is a 3D driving video game in which the player controls a Ferrari Testarossa Spider from a third-person rear perspective. (From Wikipeida.) That’s all you really need to know. The rest is icing on the cake. Controlling the car onscreen, with a male driver and female passenger, you …

Super Nintendo’s Super Mario All-Stars compilation is one of my favorite cartridges and/or game compilations ever. For the uninitiated, All-Stars is a re-publication of four NES Mario titles: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros 3., and the previously unreleased (in North America) Super Mario Bros. Lost …

It’s almost criminal that this game isn’t mentioned more often among the GOATs of FPS shooters, particularly in the James Bond 007 franchise. 2010 brought about a buzz when Activision acquired the James Bond license and announced a reboot of one of the most influential console first person shooters ever …

Like most of my Xbox reviews, I want to point out that I played this version of Halo 2 on the Xbox One. Unlike a lot of my reviews, this game was remastered for the new console, but with a caveat: you could switch between the HD remastered graphics and …

Here’s a hidden gem for some of you retro gamers out there – The Simpsons Arcade Game. Developed by Konami, it shares a ton of similarities to their other beat’em up games, such as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series. In fact, it’s practically the same exact game with Simpsons …

Let it be known I already wasn’t a fan of the original Paperboy. I always felt like the game was full of cheap, stupid challenges, because it was also short. I get the premise, which is a cool, and how some folks probably loved it – maybe still to this …

Here is a game that time forgot: the 2010 pseudo sequel (and update) to NBA Jam. Someone, somewhere is probably wondering why I gave this a review on the Wii. Well, for starters, I was thinking the same thing! Why did I have this on the Wii and nowhere else? …

This one was a long time coming! I remember when this game first came out on the original Xbox – back when Circuit City was still a thing. I was excited to pick it up, and quickly fell out of love for the dark environments. The version I’m reviewing is …

If you were to tell six-year-old me while growing up, that puzzles games would be some of my fondest memories, I’d probably look at you confused – because I’m only six, remember? Seriously though, puzzle games? The mere mention of the word puzzle brings to mind grandparents doing crosswords or …

I’ll never forgot the golden age of working in a video rental store. My high time there was the period when VHS was transitioning to the brand-new DVD discs, as well as video games moving into a new generation. The Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were king at first, but …

Dual console releases became more common as the 90’s war between Sega and Nintendo forged on. Publishers were caught between exclusivity licenses with Nintendo or breaking the mold to work with Sega – or eventually both, when Nintendo’s practices came into legal question. As such, you’d often find titles, such …

It’s hard to believe this game is almost ten years old now, while the Nintendo 3DS is still alive (but on life support due to the portability of the Nintendo Switch). That’s where it falls into odd territory as a “retro game” but I feel it’s old enough now to …

The fifth installment of Mortal Kombat was the first to not be released prior in the arcades; a dwindling and almost extinct concept for today’s gamers who didn’t have the theater-to-home experience with gaming as we do with film. Deadly Alliance takes us on a journey that actually had me …

The original Perfect Dark was a pseudo-successor to the massively popular Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64. Created by the same Rare Studios team, Perfect Dark took everything that made Goldeneye great and blew it up tenfold. The result was another cult classic cartridge which pushed the limits of the …

For the longest time professional wrestling video games were much like games licensed for blockbuster movies: the premise was great, but the actual end product was seldom passable. The sport, er, sports entertainment, exploded around the same time as video games rebounded with the NES in the 1980s. A few …

Someone must’ve taken a cue from the original Mega Man 2 on this one… Mega Man X2 is the sequel to the Super Nintendo’s “X” series of Mega Man games which spun off of the originals, which only saw one true dedicated 16-bit sequel with Mega Man 7. The reason …

Now here’s a classic for you 8-bit Nintendo gamers! I’ll never forget holding this game in my hands for the first time. The shrink-wrapped silver box with a spaceman-of-sorts ready to fire an arm cannon at aliens. Metroid captured the imagination of the era, which included Sigourney Weaver’s Alien movies. …

As far as side-scrolling beat’em up games go, Streets of Rage 2 might be one of the best. I’ve always held a high regard for the genre, specifically Konami’s line which took a formula based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and replicated it successfully to other brands such as the …