One word. Doom. It's a simple name that can invoke a lot of things. Deathmatch, modding, programming. Doom is and was a lot of things to a lot of people. It's also known for being ported to everything. Why is this the case? Why Doom and not its older brother Wolfenstein 3D? I have compiled a list of six reasons why I think that's the case, based on my own knowledge of Doom and programming in general.<
Some games fall into a category I call “mystical”. These games inspire the imagination and there seems to be more to the world than what you can see at face value. One of exemplary game series are that of the character Rayman. Just look at Rayman himself, he has no arms or legs, so his body parts just float! When I first played the demo for the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2 at nine years old, I knew it was something special. Though strangely, I didn’t really play Rayman 2 until this year. Perhaps it’s because when I rented Rayman 1 many years ago, I was put off by the crushing difficulty. Thankfully that’s not the case with the second one.
I remember when I first heard about Sega leaving the console hardware business. I was so confused! Sega had always been the counter to Nintendo. Nintendo made consoles, Sega made consoles, but now there were going to be Sega games on Nintendo consoles! For anyone who grew up in the 90’s, this was crazy news. We learned in hindsight, that Sega of Japan was ran by a group of rabid monkeys or something. Purposefully sabotaging their company due to their jealousy over the success of Sega of America. I can’t think of any other reason for the disastrous handling of the Sega Saturn here in the states. Anyway, for whatever reason, Sega continued to make high quality games (let’s ignore most of the Sonic series here), and these are my favorites:
When it comes to the Crash Bandicoot series, I have a long history. We got a PlayStation when I was a little kid, and one of the first games we got for it was Crash Bandicoot. Like a lot of kids at that time, we played stuff out of order, so the second Crash game I played was actually Crash Bandicoot: Warped (the third one; not sure why they didn’t just call it “Crash 3”). Despite the fact that the third builds heavily off of the second, which itself has quite a few differences from the first, I never really found the transition jarring. Chalk it up to childhood, I guess. But the transition probably should've been pretty jarring -- Crash: Warped is an interesting take on how to evolve a platformer series. They say variety is the spice of life, and they certainly added lots of variety to the gameplay for the third installment. I'm not entirely sure it was worth it, though.
I love looking at games from what amounts to the puberty of video games, there's so many things to talk about. Transitioning to 3D was an awkward time for video games. Many 3D games of the era had what are commonly referred to as "tank controls" -- You turn your character left and right, and then you move forward and backwards. You never performed these actions at the same time, until Super Mario 64. SM64 changed how 3D controls were thought of, thanks in part to the analog stick on the N64 controller.
Everyone who knows me knows I like my first person shooters old-school. Newer shooters are fine and dandy, but they lack flair. Old-school shooters have interesting weapons that can shoot everything from bullets to lightning. There's interesting weapons to use, and usually interesting enemies to use those weapons on. Newer shooters have... assault rifles that you use to shoot brown people. Okay okay, that's a generalization. But that's certainly what it feels like, especially when you're used to a game like Quake, which features the aforementioned lightning gun, and has an enemy that shoots grenades and has a chainsaw. I must not be the only one who thinks so, since classic FPS style games have seen a resurgence lately, what with the reboots of Rise of the Triad and Shadow Warrior. However, classic FPS' didn't do everything right, certainly not, so perhaps a combination of new and old shooters would be a good idea. To that end, we have Wolfenstein: The New Order.
I have interesting history with the Spyro series. My first exposure to it was the demo of the first game included with Crash Bandicoot: Warped, its inclusion owed to the fact that Naughty Dog and Insomniac had a working relationship. Years later I found myself in a video rental store picking out a game to rent. Spyro 2 caught my eye, and I rented it, played it, and really enjoyed it. Spyro 2 is definitely my favorite of the series, and the one I would recommend overall. However, recently I saw a 100% speed-run race of the original Spyro the Dragon, so I was reminded that I have never completed any of the Spyro games to 100% completion. Inspired, I chose to finish the original.
Are you hyped for the impending release of the new Super Smash Bros. games? Would you like a chance to play the game before its official release? Well, then look no further than Nintendo's Smash Fest event at Best Buy! Certain select Best Buy stores around the country will allow the general public to play the game early. This will only occur for a limited time, though. The dates and times for when this will happen are as follows:
Wednesday, June 11 from 4pm to 9pm
Saturday, Ju
Update August 2016: The download link was broken, so that's been fixed. I have also added instructions down below.
One of the things that always irked me about Wolfenstein 3D is that its control scheme is a little too oldschool. The game features what I'd call 'strafe mode', instead of dedicated strafe keys, so you can't really play it like you would any other FPS. So online I found there's a top-notch port of Wolfenstein 3D to windows called Wolf4SDL. I grabbed the source code, made it so your left/right keys always make you strafe, and made it so the mouse doesn't move you forward/black, and boom, now I can actually play Wolf3D!
Download it here. Extract this zip into your Wolf3D folder. If you don't have Wolf3D, just go get the shareware version. Source code can be found here. This will not work with Spear of Destiny.
Oh man oh man oh man. Was that Nintendo Direct cool or what?! First, I want to get something off my chest, though. I'm honestly a bit annoyed that they're releasing two different Smash Bros games at once. When the two were first announced, I held some hope that they'd be, essentially, the same game, with minor graphical changes, but this has proven to not be the case. Why, Nintendo? Why are you making us buy what is, for the most part, the same game, twice? This is worse, and more despicable than any DLC campaign I've ever seen. And nobody is talking about it. Why? I'd rather pay a couple dollars here and there for new stages over the years, than having to pay over $100 to get all the stages. And to top it off, at any given time, half of the available stages will be inaccessible in any given playing session. Nintendo, please. Please don't do this.
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