10 Forgotten 8-bit Games that Need a Remake/Reboot
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/03/12 at 03:58 PM CT
The 3rd Generation of consoles was home to a lot of innovation and creativity in game design. Games were an entirely new canvas upon which to paint entertainment, with only the barest of design paradigms laid-down by Generations 1 and 2. Yet for all its freedom and newness, the 3rd Generation was not without its problems: Crushing difficulty due to the ‘arcade mentality,’ sloppy controls that made even interesting games unplayable, and terrible Engrish (or lack of text altogether) that made everything a guessing game with completely inscrutable rules and goals.
Modern games have evolved beyond the flaws of yesteryear (and, in the course, developed a host of flaws of their own), with many long-running franchises experiencing every evolutionary bump in the road. Yet the 3rd Generation also was home to a number of intriguing games that never developed into franchises, thus becoming frozen in the past. Here’s a list of 8-bit games that I’d like to see re-created with a fresh …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2011
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/26/12 at 05:33 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
I reviewed a broad variety of things, including two non-traditional FPSes and the most over-hyped game in the Wii’s library. I also got the chance to experience the full breadth of Wii MotionPlus ‘enhanced’ controls.
“Lost in Shadow” – 3/5
“Red Steel 2” – 4/5
“Create” – 4/5
“The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” – 3/5
“Trine” – 3/5
“Dungeon Defenders” – 3.5/5 (4.5/5 for the superior PC version)
“Portal 2” – 5/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris is deeply submerged in the world of “Skyrim,” a game which, he tells me, he should be ready to review sometime in June. In the meantime, he managed to squeeze in a Rhythm game he has already mastered on another platform and a short platformer, alongside our two staff co-op games for the quarter.
“Dungeon Defenders” – 4/5
“Rock Band 3 …
The Great Videogame Crash of ~2013?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/18/12 at 03:05 PM CT
Videogame development has been in a state of flux for the past few years, moving from a niche business to a bank-busting industry seeking to find a home alongside the other forms of Big Media. Yet this incredible prosperity came with a lot of growing pains. This generation has seen more hardware failures than any other, this generation has seen publisher greed lead to crackdowns on used games and a variety of unethical sales techniques like Day-One DLC, games are released buggy and unfinished, nobody knows what to think about smartphones and their massive libraries of cheap & terrible games, and while more games are being released now than ever – especially from Western developers – there are few stand-out titles that are impressive now AND will withstand the test of time.
To me, the current videogame market closely resembles the one built-up by Atari (delenda est!) that lead to the Great Videogame Crash of 1983. Yes, I may have been 3 years old at the time and completely …
Value Added?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/12/12 at 03:24 PM CT
This generation of consoles has seen numerous changes – with most of them coming in the form of things I dislike. One of the most obtrusive changes is the way in which online functionality has permeated every facet of our consoles. Once stand-alone bastions of simplicity, consoles have become just as dependent upon the Internet as PCs.
Had online functionality been implemented in a console-minded fashion – that is, simple and unobtrusive – it would have been an obvious choice for the title of “Best New Innovation” of the generation. A simple and free service to provide matchmaking for online games, mandatory software patches, and a digital marketplace: This is the bare minimum of online functionality, and it’s all we really need. Yet the recent greed of the game industry has lead them down the dark and twisted path of “software as a service,” in which they bleed users dry through subscription fees and microtransactions while simultaneously driving users insane …
The Gristmill
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/05/12 at 04:07 PM CT
I have noticed a disturbing trend in games this-gen. Not just my favorite genre of RPGs, but many genres, including strategy and even FPS, have become increasingly focused on one gameplay mechanic: Grinding.
Grinding was introduced long ago in the first RPGs. Games like “Phantasy Star,” “Dragon Quest,” and “Final Fantasy” all involved grinding, but it was a side effect of the then-new mechanic of improving the character’s skills instead of the player’s. Grinding was a necessary evil as developers worked to find the right balance of challenge and playability in their games. If battles were too easy, players could blow through the game with no effort. If battles were too hard, a few hours of grinding would take care of it. It was ‘better,’ it seemed, to err on the side of challenge.
The 16-bit era brought us balanced RPGs, still the only genre to feature grinding, that could be completed using only the points accumulated from battles fought naturally through …
Vaguely Related Review: Good Old Games
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/29/12 at 04:48 PM CT
I am not a PC gamer. There are a number of reasons behind my disdain for the PC as a gaming platform, mostly revolving around cost of upkeep and incompatibility issues. The incompatibility issue that bothers me the most, however, is the fact that games made for older operating systems, like DOS and Windows 9x, don’t play nicely with modern operating systems, like Windows XP and especially Windows Vista/7. Even more annoying is the fact that 64-bit Windows 7 no longer supports 16-bit applications… at all. In order to run 16-bit apps in 64-bit Windows 7, it’s necessary to download a 32-bit virtual machine of Windows XP… but this feature is only available in the Pro and Ultimate flavors of Windows 7, which leaves gamers out in the cold (or forces them to go with a third-party virtual machine) if they aren’t running Windows 7 Ultimate (Who would ever buy Pro for a non-work machine?).
This cut-off of 16-bit compatibility by Microsoft is, of course, necessary. Windows became …
SOPA/PIPA ≠ Tasty South American Dessert
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/22/12 at 03:45 PM CT
This past week has seen an unprecedented amount of uproar coming from the Internet. And not just from small, isolated communities on the Internet (which are prone to tempest-in-a-teapot-scale uproars on a daily basis), but the ENTIRE Internet.
What could cause such a huge and fractured group to unite under one banner? How about an undisguised attempt by Corporate America to impose causeless censorship and technical restrictions that would break the underlying structure of the entire Internet? Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? Apparently it DID sound like a great idea to a number of America’s elected representatives; individuals who are put in office by the will of the people in order to represent the will of the people.
But anyone who lives in this country should be well aware that representing the people is the last thing on the minds of many of our congress-critters. Instead, their eyes flash with dollar signs at the prospect of being lobbied. They swoon with the …
FantasyFantasyFantasy
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/15/12 at 09:12 PM CT
Fantasy is one of the primary thematic settings that has always driven videogames. It has been with us for decades, primarily pushed by PC game developers in America, with a stylized version creeping across the Pacific to bring life to popular RPG franchises like “Final Fantasy” and “Dragon Quest.” This generation, as more and more Fantasy-themed PC games find their way onto consoles, one thing is becoming painfully apparent: A stunning lack of creativity.
Fantasy is my favorite genre primarily because anything can happen. It is not bound by realism, nor by scientifically-feasible concepts (which are frequently proven wrong or impossible, thus ruining a variety of popular Science Fiction as progress marches on). As long as a Fantasy setting is internally consistent, providing a framework of rules for how the world works, it is actually the most flexible genre for storytelling. Yet what do we get in our Fantasy videogames? A choking glut of so-called “Dark Fantasy,” in …
The Zelda Timeline
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/08/12 at 05:57 PM CT
While it has been discussed and debated among fans of the franchise for nearly two decades (with the start of the speculation revolving around “Link to the Past” and “Ocarina of Time”), the timeline of the ‘Legend of Zelda’ series has always been a bit of a mystery. Nintendo would release new games in the series randomly: sequels, prequels, sidestories; everything just got stirred-together into a big, incomprehensible morass. Until now.
For the 25th anniversary of the ‘Legend of Zelda’ series, Nintendo released (in Japan only, sadly) an anthology of ‘Zelda’-related documents and trivia called Hyrule Historia, which has been translated by an enterprising amateur translator who goes by the handle, GlitterBerri. Of particular note is page 69, which contains a complete timeline of Hyrule’s history with each ‘Legend of Zelda’ game occupying its official space. Yet this timeline contains a huge “WTF” surprise in the fact that the creators of the ‘Legend …
Year in Review: 2011
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/02/12 at 05:03 PM CT
The year 2011 has come and gone. Every year has its great successes as well as things that didn’t quite go as planned. Let’s take a look back at what the past year brought us:
Top 5 Fails
5. Sony Sues George “GeoHot” Hotz for PS3 Jailbreak
Showing its true colors as an Evil Corporation, Sony decided to sue the hobbyist hacker, George Hotz, a.k.a., GeoHot, for his part in developing and releasing a jailbreak for the PlayStation 3. Sony wasn’t content with 2010’s removal of the ‘Other OS’ feature of the PS3, nor was it content to just issue a Cease and Desist to GeoHot. Instead, Sony went the Big Brother route, suing Hotz and demanding the IP addresses of everyone who visited Hotz’ site or viewed a PS3 jailbreak how-to video on YouTube.
Sony and GeoHot settled out of court. The only part of the settlement that was revealed was the fact that Hotz ‘promised’ never to hack a Sony product ever again. Considering all of the bluster and obnoxiousness on …
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