retro review
Retro Review: Street Fighter (Arcade)
Release Date: 1987 Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom It is rare to see a game that is revolutionary in its gameplay and mechanics yet gets completely overshadowed by its direct sequel. That is exactly the case with Street Fighter. Recently, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior celebrated its 25th anniversary. Capcom’s iconic competitive fighting game was responsible for the fighting-game boom ar...[Read More]
Retro Review: Custer’s Revenge (Atari 2600)
Release Date: September 23, 1982 Developer: Mystique Publisher: Mystique The second generation of video games was literally the Wild West. Nowhere was this more evident that when it came to video game releases. With no licensing programs for third-parties, there was no “quality control” for games, which meant that console manufacturers couldn’t weed out bad games or bad game ideas. Nowhere was thi...[Read More]
Retro Review: Willow (NES)
Release Date: July 18, 1989 Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Back in the early days of video games, movie tie-in games were seen as cheap cash-ins. In a way, they still are now, but they’re mainly released on mobile phones for dirt cheap. But the movie tie-ins of the 80s were made to be played on home consoles and sold at $40-50. Yes, there were some good movie-licensed games back then, like Ba...[Read More]
Retro Review: Super Metroid (SNES)
Release Date: March 19, 1994 Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo In another example of my advancing age, Samus Aran and the Metroid series recently turned 30 years old. I was 15 years old when Metroid debuted on the NES. I wasn’t playing video games at the time, however. I was in high school, the girls were pretty, and I had a sudden urge to “play” with them way more than I wanted to play the ...[Read More]
Retro Review: Devil’s Crush (TG-16)
Release Date: July 20, 1990 Developer: NAXAT Soft Publisher: NEC For me, video pinball was one of my guilty pleasures. I started my love for video pinball games with, well, Video Pinball for the Atari 2600. It was primitive and lacked any real depth, but I would play it for hours. When I got my hands on my TurboGrafx-16, the 8/16-bit hybrid that could, I eventually sought out a video pinbal...[Read More]
Retro Review: Sinistar (Arcade)
I may have spent my gaming time at home playing the Atari 2600 when I was younger, but I truly cut my gaming teeth in the arcade. My first arcade game was Gun Fight, an ancient, two-player versus, Western-themed gun fighting game. This was back around 1976. I became hooked on arcades at that very moment, and that addiction has lasted for a very large part of my life. Even today, I will go to a ra...[Read More]
Retro Review: Herc’s Adventures (PS1)
Back in its heyday, LucasArts was a premier video game developer and publisher. In addition to great Star Wars titles like Rebel Assault and Star Wars: Dark Forces, George Lucas’s video game studio made and released some non-Star Wars gaming classics like Maniac Mansion, LOOM, and Full Throttle. Although the majority of LucasArts games were confined to the PC, many titles were either ported to con...[Read More]
Retro Review: Rygar (NES)
Release Date: 1987 Developer: Tecmo Publisher: Tecmo The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) has more than its share of classic titles. I loved playing them all, but I much preferred discovering games that, while not heralded as absolute classics, I still enjoyed playing for hours on end. Tecmo’s Rygar, a cult classic among NES fans, fits that description for me to a tee. Rygar started life...[Read More]
Retro Review: Kaboom! (Atari 2600)
Release Date: 1981 Developer: Activision Publisher: Activision Back in the second generation of console gaming, arcade gameplay was the norm. There were very few games that actually had an ending; Atari’s Adventure for the Atari VCS/2600 comes to mind, as it is the first game that I recall actually having an ending. For games back then, the goal was to get the high score and nothing more. A...[Read More]