Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of Gunpei Yokoi's death.
Many things we take for granted in the gaming world today can be tracked back to this man, including the cross-shaped directional pad (NES), portable gaming systems (Game Boy), and Metroid (every freakin' Nintendo system except the N64).
Not bad for a janitor.
Yokoi was a simple custodial worker and maintenance man at one of Nintendo's hanafuda (playing card) manufacturing plants, where he amused himself in his spare time by tinke
There are a couple of Retromags members on my PS3 friends list, but I'm not sure if you all knew that outside of blasting Necromorphs in Dead Space, or ruling the city streets in Saint's Row, I spent an awful lot of time in Sony's online avatar-based virtual world called PlayStation Home. If any of my readers ever ran across me on there, feel free to chime in and say hello in the comments--I was "Areala" on there, just as I am here. I know, how original, right? Anyway, I got involved with Home
Retromags member Softballchic and I spend a lot of time talking most nights, and it's often about video games: what we like, what we dislike, and what we're really good at. Last night the topic of achievements/trophies came up. On the PS3/Vita/PS4 model, acquiring every other trophy in a game rewards you with a final achievement, a Platinum trophy, which showcases that you've not just finished the game, but COMPLETED the game. By the time you acquire a Platinum in most games, there should be lit
One of the best things about flipping through old magazines is, of course, the ads. Doesn't matter whether you're looking at EGM or National Geographic, the ads always hold up a mirror to the culture of the time period. Advertisers know that twenty years later, neither anyone's going to care about the way an ad looks, nor will they be mocked for it by future-dwelling homo sapiens.
Because of the internet, they're also wrong.
Video game ads don't often approach this level of hilarity, but my
Realizing I haven't posted a blog entry in well over a year is kind of becoming an annual event here in my Retromags world. I'm not as active as I should be, as I'd like to be, and much as I wish I could promise to change all of that, I don't make promises I can't be certain of keeping. One of the most recent things I blogged about was the question of what happens when one's desire to keep up with gaming flounders, and as it turns out, there's still no cut-and-dried answer to that. Playing video
The recent death of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who starred in such memorable films as "They Live" and such immemorable ones as "Hell Comes to Frog Town" and "Sci-Fighter", really got me thinking about movies that were ahead of their time in one way or another. So I'm not boring my readers to death, I'm restricting myself to the five best examples that I believe fit this mold and I'm only allowing one John Carpenter flick on the list. That said, here are my picks:
5) John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)
My PS3 suffered the Yellow Light of Death problem today about an hour into my playtime of the Silent Hill HD Collection which I had just purchased today. *sigh*
Skyrim FINALLY gets its DLC released on the PS3 this coming week, and for the first week it's available, Bethesda is offering it at 50% off to apologize for taking it so long to get here. Gonna miss out on that sale, because there's no way I'll have my PS3 fixed in time. *double sigh*
Sending my PS3 in to Sony to get it repaired wil
"Hooo boy, Areala, do you really want to go here?"
Yes, yes, I think I do. Because it's my blog, and it's my opinion, and you're all entitled to it. Besides, what's better than potentially starting a gigantic flame war over music and personal preferences? OK, besides sex. Right, nothing! So here's the deal. I'm going to list some covers that are better than the originals and explain why. You're all going to tell me how correct I am or that I'm going to burn in hell for blasphemy, and eit
Every so often, the magazines from back in the day would give us a peek behind the scenes so that the rest of us would know (or at least have a vaguely better idea) what those weirdos whose names all appeared on the masthead at the front of the magazine did for the magazine besides the obvious.
So for their 50th issue, EGM treated us to a four-page spread of insider information, Photoshopped antics, personal photos, and other goodies. In case it's not obvious, this is one of the best reasons t
You know what? I'm sick and tired of this decades-old mantra being trotted out by every two-bit critic who can't even be arsed to involve himself or herself with the object of his/her derision. I honestly thought we were past this nonsense when Roger Ebert first decided to throw the idea that video games cannot be art out into the open years ago. One would have assumed that the immense number of people (both gamers and developers alike) who took offense at this might have made him re-think hi
Combing through the archives, I thought it would be fun to review some classic games here in the blog, and since adventure games have always been enjoyable to me, I decided to write about a quirky and unique but often frustrating and entirely too short one from the DOS era. "Daughter of Serpents" (also released later on CD-ROM and re-titled "The Scroll") is a point-and-click graphics adventure along the lines of King's Quest or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. But while those titles wer
Let's face it - if you've been gaming for as long as I have, it's quite likely that your first exposure to a game that threatened to actually make you change your underpants was Resident Evil. And if there's one area in Resident Evil that is more likely to have actually made you need to change your undies than any other, it was one of the most infamous jump-scares in video game history: when the dogs break through the outside windows and into the narrow hallway. Even if you suspected something
So I've been fussing around with a few hidden object games over the last couple of months which is why my progress on this blog has been...infrequent to say the least. Some of them have been crap, a couple of them have been good, but only one has stuck out so far enough to make me want to write about it on here, and that's Dire Grove.
Dire Grove is just one game in a series known as "Mystery Case Files". These have been published on a number of platforms including the Wii and the DS, b
WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!!
This blog entry deals with a game that features adult subject matter, including adult language, mature sexual themes, and graphic depictions of violence. If you are easily offended by such things or have not reached the age of consent for your area of residence, please do not read any further or click on any links featured within.
In keeping with this month's recurring horror theme, I'm cranking it up a bit (hopefully without violating any posting r
Most people who have spent any significant portion of time around computers are aware of the style of program known as a "chatbot". This is a simple piece of software programmed with some degree of artificial intelligence that can "interpret" what a user is typing, and then attempt to carry on a conversation with that person. Really good ones can often fool the general public, and every so often, someone will write one and unleash it on some unsuspecting chatroom and then sit back and watch th
"It's time to kick ass and chew
bubblegum. And I'm all outta gum."
-- Duke Nukem
Laugh if you must, but I was one of the gamers who was utterly heartbroken to hear the long-time-coming announcement that Duke Nukem Forever was to be no more. I had long ago accepted the fact that I had been jilted, and that Duke was long gone, probably too busy off kicking alien pseudopods to bother with the likes of starring in another video game. But still inside me, there was a part, a tiny little pa
I was very nervous picking up Borderlands. Sure, I'd read all the reviews that said what a fun game it was and all, but after all, I already have Fallout 3. Did I really need another game set in a post-nuclear style area where everybody is searching for a Vault?
I plucked up my courage, deposited my money at the local game store, drove home and discovered that, yes, I absolutely did need another post-nuclear style game that has 87 bazillion different types of guns.
Keep in mind, I'm playing
November of 2009 saw the release of a new roleplaying game on the Nintendo DS (at least here in the US) entitled "Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", developed by Big Blue Bubble Inc. and published by Aspyre. In it, you take on the persona of an adventurer who is very interested in getting his (or her) hands on the loot inside the previously-abandoned Dwarven mountainhome of Firetop. Legend speaks of treasure troves of gold coins, sparkling gemstones, and magical trinkets galor
As the saying goes, better late than never. In this case, it's just because I found out about it, it's on Friday the 23rd, and thus I have way, way less than 24 hours to write this post about why you wish that you lived in Minnesota right now.
"Be excellent to each other." It was good advice when Bill S. Preson, Esq. & Ted Theodore Logan gave it to us back in 1989, and it's especially good advice today. Because in this case, being excellent means kicking out the jams and pulling out all
Well, it's October, which means the desire for pants-wetting fear has come back into vogue for a few weeks. So what better way to celebrate spooky season than a write-up about some games which genuinely scared me at one point or another!
Note that this is not a "best of" list, or similar type of ranking. The order here isn't indicative of a specific game necessarily being better than the one below it, or worse than the one above it. All I'm ranking here is how effective these games were at
This is not your typical Areala blog entry, as will readily become apparent when you keep reading. I know that normally my writings deal with video games of some kind, and occasionally books, but today I decided that I have neglected music long enough, and it was time to fix that. And what better kind of music to write about than the kind that has been relegated to the clearance bins of history but that is still deserving of your attention. There's certainly plenty of it out there, especially
Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.
Part Three
In part two of this series, we looked at the problem of difficulty, and the pros and cons of a straight-up room-for-room conversion of the original Tomb of Horrors module. This part will look at the persona that the player will take on when he
Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.
Part Two
In Part One of this series, we talked about the history of the Tomb of Horrors adventure and we picked our perspective choice. If you haven't read it, please start there. All others, ignore that "Abandon All Hope..." sign hanging in front of
Areala's "What If..." Game Design series is a partially-serious, partially-tongue-in-cheek, completely-hyphen-laden look at what would happen if things that are not currently video games were turned into video games under her supervision.
Part One
Our first foray into this strange and uncharted world of would-be game design merges two of Areala's most favorite things: Dungeons & Dragons and adventure games in an effort to create the ultimate player-slaying nastyfest. I speak of none
On my PS3, that is. It's been a long, hard battle, but I have finally achieved Level 7 in terms of my trophy score.
I've put a lot of hours into getting those suckers, and I'm quite happy to see that it is paying off. My proudest achievement is still earning the Platinum trophy for Dead Space; beating that game on Impossible mode was hell on earth, but I slogged through it and earned my just reward. So far, it's the only game I have managed to get a Platinum for, though I am close with Fall
Affiliate Disclaimer: Retromags may earn a commission on purchases made through our affiliate links on Retromags.com and social media channels. As an Amazon & Ebay Associate, Retromags earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your continued support!
