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 21 February, 2016 at 08:58AM 1 0
Last week I briefly discussed how I used to love to explore in Super Mario 64. Well, some games are built around this idea of exploration. This has become quite a ubiquitous thing in gaming these days, what with all the "open world sandbox" games that come out. However, in a much simpler (and more memory-limited) time, we had the so-called "Metroidvania" genre. My most recent trek in this genre came by way of Metroid Prime 2, which incidentally would be a terrible game to be introduced to the genre through. Not because it's a bad metroidvania game or anything but more on that later. I have played Metroid Prime, the first one, but since I played this one much more recently I feel it'd be a better review if I talk about the second game instead.
Posted by Billy Posted on 3 August, 2015 at 4:56PM 1 0
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.
Posted by Billy Posted on 13 June, 2015 at 9:44PM 2 0
As computer hardware technology has gotten faster and more advanced, so too has the entertainment software running on it. I am speaking of course, of video games. Increasingly important in today’s video games is the use of physics. In order to become immersed in a video game, players often expect the game world to react in a realistic way, which means physics calculations. In real life, we explain how objects move and interact using Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. In video games, we also apply these same laws, but in a video game context. Indeed, the process of applying Newton’s laws in a video games is often called a “simulation”, often through the use of a special sub-system called a “physics engine”.
Posted by Billy Posted on 28 May, 2014 at 4:56PM 1 0
The following C++ function does line-of-sight testing for a 2D game that uses tiles. The level map is a multidimensional array of integers (levelmap[LEVEL_HEIGHT][LEVEL_WIDTH]) that represent each tile; 0 signifies and empty tile, any number higher than that is solid. A vector2 is just a datatype that contains an object's x and y position.
// Check line of sight between two points (usually the camera/player) Continue Reading »
Posted by Billy Posted on 13 March, 2014 at 9:37PM 2 0
Remember that Combat clone I was working on? Well now its not so crappy! Gameplay has been overhauled -- Gameplay has been sped up, and now you can actually win or lose. It also has graphics by Aaron Martinez, aka our own Metal_Kitty666, and they look pretty good. Timing issues have also been fixed. Try it out and tell me what you think in the comments.
Please be sure to read the included readme.txt file, and download it
Posted by Billy Posted on 12 March, 2014 at 6:24PM 2 0
Making sequels is probably pretty hard. I've never had to do it myself, but I can imagine. Especially when said game is pretty far into the franchise, and from a different developer. Probably one of the worst ways to handle this would be to essentially remake the last 'main' game in the franchise again. You've probably put together the pieces by now: That's exactly what Traveller's Tales did when they made Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
I have a long history with Crash Bandicoot. When I was only 5 years old, my dad came home with a Sony Playstation. One of the games he had gotten for it was the original Crash Bandicoot. Our whole family loved that game, and we even got the sequels. I have fond memories of my mom with the strategy guide for Crash 3 reading from it to my father, who was playing the game. The kids sat and watched. Can you imagine that? The kids sat and watched our dad play through the game! We all got our turns, of course, me probably more than anyone. My favorite was Crash Bandicoot 2. My friend Kyle and I played that one the most, and Kyle was really good at finding all the secrets without any help. I was amazed when he showed me the secret warp room in Crash 2, and how to get there. Crash 2 remains my favorite.
Posted by Lazlo Falconi Posted on 11 October, 2013 at 9:59PM 0 0
It's no secret that we here at Retro of the Week love our Dreamcast games. Either in their natural habitat or ported to other, more successful consoles, the Dreamcast had a huge library of great games. One of those beloved titles is Ikaruga, an extremely fast vertical arcade shooter with a rather interesting play concept. Instead of just shooting at everything you see, and avoiding obstacles, you have to switch the polarity of your ship to either destroy opposite colored enemies, or absorb si
Posted by Billy Posted on 9 October, 2013 at 3:16PM 2 0
So as some people have pointed out RotW has been neglected as of late. There are many reasons for this, most of which is school. Aside from that, I've been working on a simple game: A remake (of sorts) of the Atari 2600 game Combat. The initial idea was to add online multiplayer, which is still happening, but is not included in this initial beta version. I encourage anyone and everyone to try it out and give me some feedback. Please read readme.txt first, though. All the
Posted by Lazlo Falconi Posted on 28 August, 2013 at 1:04PM 1 0
According to Engadget, Nintendo plans to release a new, cheaper handheld this fall, titled oh so cleverly the Nintendo 2DS, since it functions like a 3DS, but without the 3D aspect. First of all, isn't this a bit confusing? Will the general public, who Nintendo seems to be going after lately, be able to figure out that the Nintendo 2DS will play 3DS games? Will they even notice the difference?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of 3D, and it's probably the aspect of my 3DS that I care least about, but really Nintendo, this is more of a cop out that the DS Lite. At least that improved over the previous incarnation of the device. But this... First of all, it removes, really the defining feature of the device, and then gets rid of the handy-dandy clamshell design that protected the screens and has defined how handhelds look since 2003!
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