Well, another stealth release by Atari… sort of. I think it was announced for the 360 a few days before coming out, though I saw nothing about the Steam release before it came out. Star Raiders was a weird game back in the day, but very revolutionary, due to it being one of the first proper space battle simulators, and it had some strategy segments and such, with a good amount of control options. It came out on various 8-bit Atari computers, but more popularly (or at least more commonly known in recent times) on the Atari 2600. The Atari 2600 version is noteworthy due to the touchpad controller it required.

So I decided to check it out, since the last Atari reboot, Yar’s Revenge, was great. My expectations weren’t as good as Yar’s Revenge, partly since I never actually played Star Raiders originally, and partly because the gameplay I saw in trailers didn’t seem as interesting.

So read on and see if it’s any good! Not like there’s gonna be many reviews for this elsewhere (the only review I found as of the writing of this review is an unfair review by GamePro). There’s actually not too much to talk about here, so it’s gonna be fast.
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jobocan Console, Games, PC, ps3, PSN, XBLA, xbox 360

This game started out as a rumored Zelda game for some reason (because of the triforce symbol on the clock thing). It got a bit of hype because of that. What really interested me was the graphics, ad then I heard about the completely random concept. After playing the demos, I was sold.

What is it that made me fall in love with it? Read on and see!
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jobocan Games, Handheld, PSN, psp

I was searching around the web to find a deal on a Power Glove for the NES. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find anything good in that regard, with the piece of shit being either incredibly hard to find, or way over-priced when I DID find it.

But the search wasn’t ENTIRELY fruitless, as I did manage to find something of interest that combines 2 things I love: old-school video game music and Power Metal. What I found was Power Metal band Powerglove.

Read on for a bit more info and a few songs to preview them!
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jobocan Games, impressions, Music, retro

This game is loosely based on a japanese TV show that involves playing retro grames, which is called Game Center CX. I say loosely, because I kinda doubt the story in this game is the same as in the TV show. And add to that the fact that you don’t play any actual retro games, but instead you get a bunch of new games made in a retro style, inspiring their gameplay on actual retro titles.

What I’m reviewing here is basically eight 8-bit games, and I’ll also be reviewing the package as a whole. This will be kinda long…

Well, read on!
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jobocan Games, Review

Let’s go back to the 80s and very early 90s, the golden age of the 8-bit era and simple games on the visual side of things. Wasn’t gaming great back then? Wasn’t the point of games being fun and getting your ass handed over times and times again before you’d beat them, that is when there was an ending? Games back then often came alive into the vision their creators wanted exactly, for the simple reason that not so many people were involved in them, so it was easier to get exactly where they wanted. (Note that this is an unproven theory I just made up, but you have to agree that it makes at least a small bit of sense). When you have teams of hundreds with different people working on each corner of the game, what you end up with isn’t often anything close to what was originally imagined.

Fast-forward to 2004, Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya, a Japanese doujin (independent/amateur) game developer release this little gem called Cave Story, which with what I was lead to believe, was mainly done by him alone. Now keep in mind that I haven’t completed this game yet. I’m at the final boss part, after going through the tough version of the last “cave”. And after that, there lies apparently bonus content that’s going to kick my ass, to congratulate me on taking the high road.
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David A. Games, Review