Posted by Billy Posted on 20 November, 2020 at 7:20PM 1 0
I have been playing Crazy Taxi on and off for twenty years. Just like any good arcade style game, it keeps me coming back. Also just like any good arcade game, I've never really mastered it. Sega always excelled at arcade games, and Crazy Taxi is one of the best of the lot. It first came home to the Dreamcast console. Given that I had a Dreamcast at the time, Crazy Taxi was an obvious purchase for me, and is still my preferred version of the game.
When it comes to genres, Crazy Taxi’s is hard to nail down. I wouldn’t really call it a racing game, but you are driving a car. You're a cabbie, and your goal is to pick up passengers, and drop them off as quick as you can, by any means possible. Your are timed, and when time runs out, the game is over. In addition, each passenger has a set time limit for getting them to their destination. You can earn more overall time by getting them to their destination faster than the limit. So the gameplay is a constant cycle of picking up a passenger, driving them to their destination, usually causing mayhem along the way, dropping them off, looking for a new passenger, and repeat. Wikipedia calls it a “score attack racing game”, which I suppose is fair enough.
Posted by Billy Posted on 22 October, 2016 at 12:43AM 1 0
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.
Posted by Billy Posted on 21 September, 2016 at 08:18AM 1 0
Doom is one of the most iconic games ever made, the forerunner of all FPS. Equally iconic, is its soundtrack. A mix of thrash metal and suspenseful tones, the soundtrack really set the mood for the game. Probably the most iconic of those songs (we're all three levels of iconic now), the song to the very first level: E1M1. Standing for Episode 1 Map 1, this was every Doom player's first taste of the action. The track itself is actually called "At Doom's Gate", which is a fitting name since the first level is really the entryway into the game. (The first level of Doom 2 is called Entryway, as it turns out). The song itself is very evocative of the map it represents; it's a very quick and action packed song. Keys and environmental tricks like lifts (barring secrets) aren't introduced until the second level. For E1M1 it's just run 'n' shoot. To celebrate this track, we've compiled a list of covers of this song, everything from comedy, to intriguing, to full on headbanging enjoyment. Catch 'em after the break.
Posted by Billy Posted on 10 June, 2016 at 10:27PM 2 0
One of the main reasons I helped start RotW was because I'd have an excuse to code a website from scratch. RotW is a great project to work on, and I'm not sure I'll ever give up on it completely. (I even just renewed the domain name!) I've always had interest in sharing the code to RotW, and possibly give back to the community a little, but I've been putting it off until now.
Hopefully someone out there will find this code useful. I decided on the GPLv3 license,
Posted by Billy Posted on 10 April, 2016 at 09:30AM 1 0
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:
Posted by Lazlo Falconi Posted on 4 April, 2016 at 8:40PM 2 0
Here's a real quirky one for ya. Have you heard of the Game and Watch series from Nintendo? Really? You haven't? And you already have two badges? In the early 80s and beyond, Nintendo got its first taste of the handheld market, not with the Game Boy, but with these weird, single-game units that for some reason had an alarm clock in them. Ahh, Nintendo, why do you put alarm clocks in everything? They were ugly, they weren't comfortable, and they weren't even that fun… But we still remember them fondly because we're gamers and make poor decisions I guess.
Posted by Billy Posted on 3 April, 2016 at 09:59AM 1 0
These days, video game collections really really aren’t anything special. In-between big releases, console manufacturers are always pushing old games down our throats. But back in the PlayStation days, the concept was more novel. Whenever my parents would buy a new console, they’d always get Ms. Pac-Man for my mom, without exception. So, for our PS1, they bought Namco Museum Vol 3. Years later, when I was rediscovering the PS1 (by way of a “PS one”), we had long since lost Namco Museum so, not knowing it was a different game with different included games, I bought Volume 1. It’s thanks to games like these, that I have my appreciation and love of classic arcade gaming.
Posted by Billy Posted on 20 March, 2016 at 12:40AM 1 0
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.
Posted by Billy Posted on 28 February, 2016 at 3:43PM 1 0
There isn't exactly a clear line of separation between "classic" and "modern" shooters, but if I had to choose one, it would be 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. (Other people would probably choose Half Life). In any case, Halo clearly marks the beginning of the popularity of the so-callled "military shooter." Before this point, it was mostly about being a lone fighter, fending off countless enemies. But now suddenly, you're a part of a larger fighting force, a military. Again as I said, there is no clear line of separation, so this game definitely still holds onto some shooter staples of the past. However, the things it brought to the table have stayed with the genre (especially on consoles) into today. If you are into console FPS, this game should mean a lot to you. Basically, Halo picked up the torch where Perfect Dark, another influential console shooter, left off.
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