Commando
No doubt you’ve experienced this quarter-sucker of a game in the arcades as a youth, or at least another game which was inspired by it. Button-smashing was prevalent in a lot of arcade games, but Commando may take the cake for non-stop action. Back when you had to “get gud” …
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Super Mario Land 2 returned to its roots following a bizarre entry on the Game Boy platform which had an Egyptian theme mixed with UFOs… this iteration also filled your screen and looked more like a “Mario” title as opposed to the very basic and tiny graphics found in the …
Mega Man 9
After praising the last two iterations of Mega Man games (7 and 8, which were on the SNES and PlayStation respectively) the ninth game in the traditional series takes us way back to Mega Man 1 and 2 visuals and gameplay… sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. A …
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is yet another game I had completed when I was younger, but damn if I know how! I don’t recall half of this game: particularly the items. If not for a guide, I can’t imagine how many hours I would’ve poured …
Wario Land II
Wow was this game frustrating. I honestly can’t believe how many people liked this game… to the point where I feel it must be one of those cartridges their parents bought them and they played it for weeks at a time without completing the game! I know, because that’s where …
Splatoon
Splatoon for the Wii U will go down as one of the most overlooked and often forgotten titles of the console’s life cycle. Due to the low sales of the system, and no re-release for the newer Nintendo Switch (which received the sequel) I feel as if most people will …
WWF WrestleMania
It’s not uncommon for an NES game to be rough around the edges or brutally difficult – thus is the case for WWF WrestleMania, the wrestling giant’s first foray into a licensed console game. It all starts off innocently too. The opening game menus welcome you to the big event …
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
You’re not seeing double, I swear! Following the review of the Sega 32X version of this very title, I had forgotten that it was also ported to the original PlayStation in 1995 for its launch as well. Like other CD-based games of its time, NBA Jam T.E. was an arcade-accurate …
The Little Mermaid
Okay, this wasn’t on my bucket list: but it was a special request by a special someone! (My daughter, in case you were wondering). The game actually isn’t terrible… that may seem like an odd thing to say about an obvious movie tie-in video game, but younger persons who didn’t …
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
One of my favorite all-time arcade games is NBA Jam. When it first released, it gave you the thrill of a rookie Shaquille O’Neal breaking glass backboards along with actual NBA players in a fantasy 2-on-2 setting. The series jumped to the forefront with an announcer who parodied the NBA’s …
Pokémon LeafGreen
Pokemon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen were both enhanced remakes of the 1996 original Pokemon Red and Blue RPGs. As my first foray into the series, I decided to skip the crappy Game Boy graphics and jump right into the updated versions. Knowing that each game has little difference (other than …
Mega Man 8
Sometimes my retro gaming adventures seem to feel mundane, as if my queue is filled with only one series or genre of game. Aside from Super Mario Bros., which spans so many different spinoffs, only one other series fits the bill of having a vast amount of titles to play: …
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Welcome to the bastard child of all Zelda games! Zelda II: The Adventure of Link follows an odd NES pattern of changing up the sequels of Nintendo’s main franchises. Super Mario Bros. 2, for example, was a large departure from the original (at least the United States version was). Yet, …
Perfect Dark Zero
Here’s a game I had much higher expectations for and wish I had a different rating system to give it a different score. A thumbs-in-the-middle still seems fair, but a lot of my criticisms with Perfect Dark Zero stem from the large shoes it had to fill from the Nintendo …
Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
I’ve never disliked a sequel so badly in my life. For everything the GameCube’s launch title Luigi’s Mansion was, the 3DS follow-up wasn’t. I’ll retract on that a bit, but not much. The game begins with all of the same setup, charms, and quirks you’ve come to expect from the …
Super Mario Kart
The trendsetter for all “kart” racing games holds up very oddly when reminiscing for this review. Let’s start with the basics: no one thought a racing game based on Mario characters was ever going to work. Yet it did, and here’s why. First and foremost, Super Mario Bros. is a …
Soul Blade
Way back when fighting games were all the rage. As consoles moved from the 2-D realm to the 3-D world with the introduction of a new generation of hardware, these fighting games evolved with them. Such is the story of Soul Edge, which was an arcade game that was ported …
Gears of War
One of the driving reasons I started this website was to archive the games I played; in doing so, it keeps me driven toward playing titles which I sometimes missed (due to lack of time) or simply fell out of touch with. None could be truer of the Gears of …