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 16 April, 2016 at 4:10PM 1 0
So if you don't know, id Software is running an open beta for the new Doom (confusing, yes it's just called "Doom"). Doom is going to come out on May 13th, so it’s about a month away. I spent some time with the open beta, and I have to say it’s looking promising. Just like Wolfenstein: The New Order, Doom is looking to be a good mix of old and new styles of shooters. However, the open beta is multiplayer only, and is pretty light on content so it’s too early to say for sure. While there are certainly things I love about this open beta, there are also things I don’t quite like about it.
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 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 3 May, 2014 at 3:30PM 1 0
I absolutely love the Doom games, it's a close contender for my favorite game series. I love to get more Doom whenever I can, and thanks to all the mods and addons constantly being created that's never a problem. The guys at id Software felt the same way, they wanted more Doom even as they were making it. This is why they were very open to the modding community, and very open to licensing their engine to other companies. Midway handled the console ports of Doom to the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. However, when it came to the Nintendo 64 they decided to not just port the game and go with something more original. Originally titled Absolution, they went with the much less cool name of Doom 64.
Posted by Billy Posted on 11 April, 2014 at 5:18PM 2 0
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.
Posted by Lazlo Falconi Posted on 19 March, 2014 at 8:08PM 2 0
The year is 1993. We've seen 3D on TV and in the arcade. But at home? Only that one kid with the rich parents had a computer that could play 3D games, and the rest of us just had the same 2D sprites that had been kicking around since the NES days. Then here comes Nintendo, ready to once again blow you away.
Star Fox is a game about flying space triangles and exploding ground squares, or something. Maybe there's a monkey in there? The green circle at the end of the map, named Venom and piloted by the vicious Admiral Andross is turning itself into a technological powerhouse, and terraforming planets to suit his army of mechano-men, when General Pepper of the Cornerian Mothers Against Change launched a full-scale war.
Posted by Billy Posted on 16 March, 2014 at 10:45PM 2 0
Let me take you back to the 90’s. Technology was fast advancing, you couldn’t buy a computer without it being obsolete immediately, and everyone in the gaming arena was trying to one-up eachother, be it by graphics, sound, or technology. Enter a company by the name of Rareware, known around this time for their graphical powerhouses Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country (which utilized pre-rendered graphics). They made games on the NES, sure, but they weren’t that well known here in the states. (I actually played Snake Rattle ‘N’ Roll as a kid. Anyone else? No?) However, during the SNES is where they really caught their stride. And then when the N64 came in, their hot streak continued. Lest we all forget all those excellent matches in 007 GoldenEye at our friends houses, not possible if it weren’t for Rare. Rare was amazing at taking a genre they hadn’t done before and conquering it. They did it with GoldenEye, they did it with Killer Instinct, they did it with Banjo Kazooie. But you’ve heard all this before; I hardly need to sing Rare’s praises (especially on a retro video gaming site), so let’s talk about my favorite Rareware title. Maybe not as groundbreaking as their other works, this game is Conker’s Bad Fur Day.
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 Lazlo Falconi Posted on 30 October, 2013 at 12:09AM 1 0
If you buy a lot of video games from Nintendo, and you're not taking part in Club Nintendo, you're wrong. The service offers a few great prizes, and goodies that aren't available anywhere else, and costs nothing more than the games you're already buying. One of the items Japanese Platinum members are lucky enough to find this year is a download for Advance Wars; Days of Ruin, which was unreleased in Japan.
Why does this matter to us? It probably doesn't. It's just interesting that a DS game has been converted to an eShop game after it went unreleased. Could we soon see DS games added to the Virtual Console? Probably not, but it's definitely something that could have a market.
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The year is 1993. We've seen 3D on TV and in the arcade. But at home? Only that one kid with the rich parents had a computer that could play 3D games, and the rest of us just had the same 2D sprites that had been kicking around since the NES days. Then here comes Nintendo, ready to once again blow you away.
