If you’re one of those people addicted to Left 4 Dead, and unable to resist anything 8-bit, then this is just the perfect thing for you:
I learned about this whilst leafing through the glossy pages of a famous gaming magazine. The game, developed by PixelForce NES, lets you run through the entire Left 4 Dead campaign in full 8-bit glory (in authentic two-player co-op), and will be available for free download on PC sometime in January.
I think this is a great idea but I can’t help but feel they missed an opportunity with the name. I mean, am I the only person that would have called this Left 4 Dead: 8-bite?
French-based publication Amusement Magazine has a photo spread by artist Marc Da Cunha Lopes and his team entitled “Made of Myth” that gives us an imagined look inside of the shops, mills and factories responsible for the creation of some of the most renown games from yesteryear.
You may recognize Amusement as the not-too-pretentious periodical that sourced the works of Jean-Yves Lemoigne (so fun to say– Zjuhn Eve Lemwhan) back in January. In keeping with the spirit of Lemoigne’s “Sexy Pixel” images is this “How It’s Made” series.
You don’t have to be an art major to appreciate the subtle humor of the gallery, the quality of the images or the time that obviously went in to the pictures. With little hesitation I deem these images “wallpaper-worthy”… Right Click > Set as Background.
Keep an eye out for issues of Amusement in newsstands and bookstores world-wide.
I know that it’s usually Tyler that fills you in on cool flash-based games here on Threevue, but he’s obviously recovering from finishing his latest set of college courses (Underwater Basket Weaving 101 is tough, dude!) so I’m taking up the slack.
A little birdie (okay, it was Joystiq) told me that there is a free, flash-based version of Doom, Heretic, and Hexen right here. I just played all three for a few minutes, and boy did they bring back some memories. So if you’re in the mood for some late-90′s FPS delights, we’ve got you covered. It’s hard to believe that what was arguably the cream of the crop in PC gaming 10-15 years ago can now be found for free within your internet browser.
If you like video games at all then you’ve heard about the title Ico. Either some developer is citing how elegant it is or a journalist says it’s their favorite game or a podcast will discuss it at length, etc etc… It got to the point where I felt like I didn’t need to play it for the fact that I was happy to just accept it as “one of the best games of all time”. Also, I didn’t want to seem like one of the art house dickheads who could lord Ico over everyone that didn’t play it (don’t worry, I don’t do that here). Eventually, after hearing only good things about a game year after year, I guess I made up my mind to find out what all the praise was about. Turns out they were right, all those journalists and enthusiasts. It’s a phenomenal game for the Playstation 2 and that I really hope everyone has the chance to play it.
If you only remember one thing from this review I hope it is that people are always talking about this game for a good reason and not just because they think it makes them sound cool.
Click for more. Don’t worry there aren’t any spoilers. Feel free to read the whole thing. Continue reading ‘Review: Ico’
New King of Games shirts for those of you out there that have the need to express your retro love with high quality fashion from Japan. They cost about $30 and come with a cool little box of stickers and a notebook (last time I checked).
Also, the Kid Icarus shirts are still for sale in select sizes. GOBUY!
I used to love A Boy and His Blob. I remember it as one of the 100 or so games that my Mom got when she purloined the stock of a out-of-business VHS renter. It had no manual, there was no internet and no one I knew had it so it took a week of futzing around just to figure out what the Licorice and Cinnamon jelly beans did.
I never did beat it… and now I won’t have to because a newer version is coming out.
One problem that I noticed when I just replayed the original in order to write this post: The titular ‘Boy’ is very floaty and I’d like to see them tighten up the controls a little bit. It would be nice if he didn’t skid 20 feet like he’s on a sheet of ice every time he stops moving.
So far it looks pitch perfect though. Keep’em coming Nintendo. You’ve got a lot more where that came from.
God, we’re so eclectic! This week we cover games from the PS1 to the iPhone and the Xbox360. We discuss music from Prince to The Appleseed Cast. We even briefly contemplate thirsty koala bears.
Mark shows up late to the party, party starts without him
Russ gets all fiduciary on the show talking about banks and stuff
Tyler cold rejects Mafia Live for being too math intensive for his little bird-like brain
“…quite possible the greatest game ever made.” – GameFan Magazine
To someone who’s never played Final Fantasy VII the quote above may seem like a bit of an overstatement. I rank FF7 as one of my top 5 games of all time but even I know it’s not perfect. Still, it has a Metacritic score of 92 (Universal Acclaim) and has achieved a rate of 90% or higher in countless forums and publications. No less than 4 spin-off games, an anime, manga and a feature length CG film have come from it. It is continually referenced and held up as a standard of the art form over 12 years after it was released and it continues to remain as relevant a game for its fans today as it was then.
Okay. If you haven’t already, you can go a head and roll your eyes now.
Merry Chip-mas! (took me forever to think that one up)
With all the attention 8bit Jesus has been getting (where’s the love for the Chanukah Zombie?) I thought everyone should know about the 8bit Peoples Christmas Album with songs from such legendary acts such as Bit Shifter and Nullsleep.
The cool thing about this album is that each of the songs were created using a different console-specific chipset. You’ve got the NES, a C64, a Gameboy and even an Atari 2600. Tell your ears I said, ‘you’re welcome’.
Being back in my hometown of Yelm, WA for a week is bringing back some memories. Most of them, amazingly, are not video game related. But you don’t want to hear about that, you came here to read about games. Well then….read on, assholes!
In the summer of 1993 I played through Soul Blazer at a friend’s house. It’s an Enix-produced SNES RPG, wherein you destroy monsters in order to release people’s souls and rebuild their villages. I guess it’s similar to Act Raiser (another Enix-produced SNES RPG) but I never played it, so who knows.
I was just as ready to blow off the news of Diablo III as Russ was when I first heard the announcement. But then I thought back to the heady days of 2000 when I was 18, my friends and I would work all night in a hot restaurant, chow down on a stolen prime rib dinner, get an older server to buy some beer and we would all retire to their house for some LAN-Tacious Horadric Cube cook-offs. I’m talking gibberish now aren’t I? No matter. It was a different time and place. But I can’t say I understand if some won’t play this game just because of its angle at which the screen is shown. That’s like not playing Half-Life 2 because of the controls in the few driving segments!
I never played the first Diablo, and when I saw a friend playing the sequel I thought what everyone thinks when they see Necromancers casting spells and Paladins upgrading their broadswords… “This game is for fucking nerds.” Basically, this game was WoW before WoW and ‘intelligent online multiplayer experiences’ were household phrases. If you wanted to play with another group of people, you were going to have to put in the phone number, hear the squealing of the modem and find them in the world.
It was tedious, it was repetitive, it was hard work and in the end it was an epic game to say that you finished.
Since emulating copyrighted software is illegal, and I don’t do it, let’s pretend I just got a Sega Genesis Emulator.
In order to celebrate and usher in a new era for classic gaming editorials on this site, I’m going to review my favorite game for the console; Earthworm Jim.
Remember levels like New Junk City or Snot a Problem? Yeah, me too. Remember COW LAUNCHED!!! or how Jim would say “Guh-Roovy!”? As the only kid on the block with a Sega, this was my marquee title. No one else had it, and it drew a crowd. It didn’t have the stark realism of Streets of Rage, or the wholesomeness of Toe Jam & Earl, and I think that is why it most appealed to the average 10 year old boy. Continue reading ‘Retrograde!: Earthworm Jim’
I think it was a regular poster on this page, 8bitmagic, that actually rented this game to me nigh on 15 years ago, down the street from where I lived at the Carmen Video. I liked the game when I was younger but couldn’t really master the finer points without the help of the instruction booklet which was missing at the time. Now that I have the internet to back me up I can make up for lost time.
When Bonk’s Adventure originally arrived on consoles across America, I was not one of the fortunate young kids who got to participate in the bonking. I had a NES at the time, not a Turbo Graphics 16. I was happy with my gray and black entertainment system, and never really jealous of the kids who owned the TG16. I would have liked to play Bonk’s Adventure, but it was not to be. Later the game came to the NES but what is a short time in the games industry of 1990 was an eternity to me, and as such I had moved on to new games.
I’m 25 now and I can finally go back and play through the game that eluded me a distant 17 years ago. Is it as good as Portal? You’ll have to click to see…. Continue reading ‘Retrograde: Bonk’s Adventure’
Russ Crandall:
Tyler Miller:
Steve McKay:
Giang Cao:
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