New Retro: Full Moon Rising!

First off, I'd like to start by saying thank you!
It's been an absolute privilege to interact and speak with all of you video game enthusiasts and fellow bloggers about gaming, and just random things in general through Google+, Youtube, and also by email. Writing this blog and the Youtube'ing has turned out to be a very enjoyable opportunity and I have you all to thank for making it that much better, so again, thank you!

But enough of that... It is my great privilege today to tell you all about Full Moon Rising! :D

And this sums up your mission in the game.

This has to be one of the most excellent, albeit short, throw-back titles I've gotten to play of late. Really top-notch. Developed by the Drunken Devs group, whose site is linked via the above picture, Full Moon Rising is definitely a well-crafted game. It's free, pretty basic, and short, but what makes it truly excellent is the charming, retro-style graphics and the goal of the game itself.

That goal, as you might have deducted from the above picture is to "baste the notch" of your in-game girlfriend, as they put it. In order to get laid, you must satisfy your girlfriend's weird furry fetish by acquiring a "moon piece" and becoming a werewolf. This is done by traversing to the other side of town while avoiding dangerous hobos and electric eels, stealing the moon piece from a vampire hunter (which probably isn't the best idea), and making it back to your dear Victoria. It ends with an awesome boss fight and an even more awesome ending, which I won't spoil. It won't quite be what you expect, though. ;]

The game itself is pretty standard old-school platforming. As a human, you have no attack and must avoid all baddies. As the werewolf, you get a rushing-forward attack where you eat your enemies that get in your way which I admit, feels pretty good given the hard time they give you as a human.

Another Drunk Dev game. :]

Aside from this, the Drunken Devs have other games which are definitely worth trying, which are a bit of a riot. I also really liked their Destroy The Porn game, and they have others. Also worth mentioning is that they actually have a section for giving them ideas for games, which I think is a pretty neat idea. These guys definitely deserve some kudos!

Anyway, thanks for reading, all!
It's been a real pleasure so far. ;]

Retro Odyssey - Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius

Now this is a particularly interesting title.. Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius is a side-scrolling shooter type game for the Super Famicom, much like the famous title Gradius. It plays very similarly, but Jikkyo is a bit more... unique? That doesn't even properly describe it. Jikkyo is downright strange, and absurd, but in a very excellent way. I wish I knew more Japanese so that I'd know some of what is going on, but then I have my doubts if that'd even help. It's just so off the wall! What were you all smoking, Konami?

My first major "WTF"-moment in the game...

This odd-ball game certainly has its charm, being a parody of other arcade shooters, most notably of Gradius. Its cast of characters as well are equally charming, but strange. From the selection screen, you have your choice of sixteen characters, ranging from baseball cap-wearing octopi, to penguins, paper planes, fairies and so forth, and they all each are given their own style of attacks and techniques. I personally like being the cat and bombing space-chickens with my mousey-bombs.

The Colorful Cast

As I said before, the game plays fairly well, much like a number of old-school arcade shooters from back in the day. The impressive size of the cast makes for differing play through experiences as they all get their own abilities and upgrades. The upgrades are picked up from shot-down enemies, which is a standard feature, and also from the bells that come onto the screen which give you varying effects.
In addition to the strange cast, there is also a large amount of equally strange and random baddies, ranging from dancing, wig-wearing penguins, to chicken leg-throwing Santas, hula-hooping monkeys, and the list continues. And the bosses are no different in their bizarreness.

Uhm... er... Shall I come back later, ma'am?

One last final thing I should warn you about is the sound and music. Keeping to the running motif, it too is rather "off the beaten path". Throughout this particular title, there is a running in-game commentary in Japanese, much like you'd hear in a Japanese game show, which I've read is where the game gets it's name-sake. The music itself are parodied remixes of more popular songs, ranging from 70s disco to more popular tunes, and even classical.
The characters, the baddies, the settings themselves, and the sound all work together to make a really excellent, albeit, an odd Super Famicom title. Overall, I liked it and I recommend it to anyone in a funny mood. Aside from this one, there are more of these games, a popular one being made for the PSX by the name of Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius: Forever With Me.

Below you can see me be decimated by drum sticks and penguins. Think you can do better? Let's see it, Starbuck! :P

Final Fantasy 7... for the NES?

(Article originally posted at FPSX Games as a guest piece, so be sure to check them out.)

That's right, I said it. Final Fantasy 7 for the NES. Or the Chinese-made, knock-off system, the SUBOR rather. It's none-the-less playable on the NES through an adapter, but I digress..

We all know and love this monumentally epic gaming experience, first released on the Playstation by Square (back when they were just Square, as opposed to the Square Enix of today). It had everything; gorgeously beautiful polygons, an epic story with all the feels, and a fantastic battle-system and game play. It was and is to this day a great addition to anyone's gaming library. Since its release, more than 10 million copies have been sold, and it has been elevated to a high status as a paragon of games.

I'd laugh and say you were lying if you've never heard of Final Fantasy 7, assuming you the reader are at least minimally a gamer or just slightly nerdy. I dare say no game has had nearly as long lasting and significant an influence on all of Nerd-dom. You can see it in the games that succeeded it, in our conventions and cosplaying, in comics and mangas (and by extension, hentai.... (rule 34! :O)), the merch still comes in droves, and there have even been a number of spin-off movies and games!

Geez, what a bad-ass!

What is little known though, is that there was the unlicensed port of Final Fantasy 7 that I mentioned previously. Developed in the early 2000's, this was developed for the Chinese's SUBOR which was essentially an NES or Famicom gaming system. After this, an English patch was developed for this which is how I played and was able to follow along. But anyways, unlicensed or no, this was a huge feat for the team of developers.

Some liberties had to be taken, however, given the restrictions of the hardware involved. One of these liberties taken was the shedding of some of the optional missions and characters. Also, the battle system was changed to be more like the Final Fantasy's of old. Aside that, this was pretty much the whole kit and kaboodle, with the original story very faithfully followed.

You're so pretty, Miss Cloud!

I thoroughly enjoyed this and my criticisms are few. The biggest problem I had were with the battles themselves. I'm not sure if it was just me, but they seemed a lot longer and drawn out than say a typical old-school Final Fantasy battle, or also a battle in the Playstation Final Fantasy 7. I usually get some amount of satisfaction out of the battles provided I'm not just in grind-mode, but the battles got to be almost horrendous. Just trying to get to the next area, I wanted to pull out my hair!

The only other major problem I had was the mishaps that occurred translating the original Final Fantasy 7 story with all the cut-scenes and luscious visuals, over to the NES-esque format which had cut-scenes reduced to pure dialogue and sprites moving minimally. This is particularly apparent and egregious once you meet up with Aeris in the church. It was hard to follow what exactly was going on without the full visuals and the action of the original cut-scene. Especially if it's been literally years since picking up and playing the original game.

Aside from that, it was a pretty enjoyable experience, and it was really neat and impressive. I recommend tracking it down for yourself to at least try it out. If anything, it's quite a marvel of skill on the part of the Chinese development team, and deserves some pretty hefty kudos.
Below is a short video I made to complement this article visually and give you a brief look at the "NES Final Fantasy 7".

Happy Zombie-Jesus Day!!
Thanks for reading!

Retro Challenge: Ghouls 'n Ghosts (#1)

So I'm sure a fair few of you are familiar with the classic Ghosts 'n Goblins series. This blisteringly difficult set of games has confounded and frustrated many a gamer in its day. I have been one of those many gamers never able to see the ending.
Now if you missed this (did you never set foot in an arcade?) or those too young, the original arcade Ghosts 'n Goblins featured Sir Arthur, a knight, in his quest to reclaim his princess from the clutches of the Demon King. With your trusty lance, you have to make your way six punishing levels, defeat the Demon King, and then play through the entire game on a harder difficulty in order to get to the real final battle and get the true ending. What makes all this even harder, you can only be hit twice and then you die, easy as that. THIS was one of a number of classic games that will forever be a true achievement in gaming, if completed. Think you're such a hot-shot with your easily obtained XBOX "achievements"? Play this game, I dare you!

Flying-ass, monkey-dude! I curse you!

Ghouls 'n Ghosts is much the same affair, not surprisingly as it's the direct sequel, but with gorgeous SNES-era visuals and effects, there's more weapons and items, and has some great tracks. Much like the previous one, you don't simply beat the game by going through the six levels. Once you get to the end of stage five, you're informed you need a specific weapon to defeat the Demon King, so you're sent back to level one and during your way back up to level five you are supposed to find the specified item which will be a random drop, then once you have that, you defeat the stage five boss and proceed to the end stage.

Those damned dogs!

Many years later, I've picked up Ghouls 'n Ghosts with the intentions of finally wiping that smirk off the Demon King's face. So far, I've seen lots of deaths and game overs, but I will persevere!
I challenge you readers to do this for yourselves as well, but remember! Pics or it didn't happen! Good luck! :]
...
...
Wish me luck too...? :S
You'll see that I in fact need it......

Retro Classic: Ghost Chaser Densei

This particular title is probably one of the more obscure beat-em'-up titles released for the Super Famicom, but a worthy addition to its library of games. Though I cannot read Japanese or find anything at all about the plot, it really isn't all that necessary. It's a beat-em'-up after all. Story isn't all that necessary. I just wish I knew why the name? Playing through, there is an obvious and utter lack of ghosts, specters, and phantoms. But I digress...

As I said, it's a Japanese, "beat the tar out of everything" type affair that is a solid, competent title. In the game, you have your choice of three characters. The first I tried out was the robot character, Belva. He plays pretty decently, and packs a punch. The trade-off is that he's kind of sluggish as a character. Makai, the human male martial artist, is the middle ground character while Iyo, the cat-lady, is fast and agile. As you would expect a feline-esque character to be. They also all have their own special sets of moves and special techniques, blocks, and a power bar system that comes into play as well.
You play through some pretty typical sets of stages, with crates and semi-destructible environs, an end-stage boss, yada yada yada. The kind of stuff you'd expect from a brawler. There's also quite the cast of baddies to beat down, ranging from mermen, to obese cyborgs and robots, failed experiments, and so forth. While this wasn't a trend-setter, off-the-beaten path game, it was an enjoyable experience. Certainly with a try. :]
Below can be found some game play, so you can see its excellence. :P

Lone Survivor: First Impressions

I've begun to play Lone Survivor recently. I've been putting it off for ages, along with other games I often get on Steam-sale. A travesty, I know, but I'm sure loads of you Steam users do it as well. But that's beside the point. Let me just say, this is pretty excellent so far. I don't want to spoil too much for those whom I hope to convince to try it. First off though, it definitely has a very stylized, retro look to it, which I think is just fantastic. Despite the old-school graphic look, it's able to immerse you into the world and give you all kinds of goose-bumps and willies. The sounds and ambient music also add to the spine-tingling. It's all really well done.

I love the dialogue in this game.

Developed by a Jasper Byrne, it's a rather odd and often surreal type of experience. It even is able to go so far as to spook me at times. It plays pretty well as well, though the weapon mode is a touch awkward. You have to exit it and reenter in order to face your enemy if you happen to be facing the wrong way.. I may have had an issue with that once or twice playing it.. :S
Other than that, you're given lots of different kinds of items that you find scattered about that solve puzzles, satisfies your hunger (you'll find that the protagonist is a hungry bastard), keeps you from going loco, and a plethora of items to craft with. I think this scrounging and what-not adds to the overall mood of the game, which is one of a post-apocalyptic type event. But it's more than that. Lots of strange events, and things to mess with your head happen throughout your survival adventure. I've found that alot of things in this game are not as they appear, so be wary. One last thing of note is that apparently how you play has an effect on the path of the story you experience. I'm curious to see how my experience will turn out in the end, based on the choices I've made thus far. I love a game that'll do that as it makes it more a personalized experience, overall.
But enough of my blabbering. Be sure to check it out on Steam. It's just $10, so if you end up not liking it, no big loss I guess. I really think this is an interesting and unique title though that can be very enjoyable. Excellent for any into survival-horror type games.
If I haven't convinced you about it thus far, be sure to check out my video below.

Retro, 8-Bit Left 4 Dead!

Yeah, that's what I said! Let me just say, I love it. Made by Eric Ruth Games in 2010, the Left 4 Dead concept is repackaged into a glorious 8-bit dream of classic visuals, sound and game play. Not only that, but it's also free! What's not to like? Be sure to click the pic below to check out Eric Ruth's site, because this guy deserves some real kudos. Not only has he done this, but he's also made an 8-bit Team Fortress arcade-style shooter which is very nostalgic and reminiscent of similar classic games of the same vein, and also an 8-bit Halo, DJ Hero, an Angry Video Game Nerd-inspired game, and others. It's all really awesome, but I digress. Back to the topic at hand, Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead.
Look at those gorgeous pixels!

Pills here!

In the game, you get the choice of the classic four characters, just as you did in the original incarnation of Left 4 Dead. You have your various weapons and item pickups, but they're only semi-persistent. For example, if you have the shotgun and you pick up the sub-machine gun, you don't drop the shotgun as you would in the original game, but rather, it simply disappears. You have your regular zombie baddies you have to fight off, but then there are also special zombies as you would find in the original as well. Let me just say, LEAVE THE WITCH ALONE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!! D:
And then there are also hunters and boomers in addition to witches (which is good because how could one reinvent Left 4 Dead, but not include a witch?). The game itself plays pretty well, but it can be pretty difficult. Either that, or I just was sucking it when I went and tried it out..? One annoyance is that if you have a zombie on top of your character, it's really hard to get away from them because there's no player-enemy collision and zombies follow you at or faster than the character's speed. This just sucks the life out of you and you can't shoot at it that close. Maybe there was a melee button that I missed though? You have to figure out the controls when you hop in as there is no tutorial. I still recommend trying this out. Despite it eventually getting frustrating, I enjoyed the game overall.
Below are highlights to a playing of the game I performed if you want a further taste of the awesomeness. But whatever you do today, go to the site and try it out for yourself. You won't regret it. Even if you get frustrated towards the end like I eventually do. :P
Let me know what you think! ;]