Video Game Franchises That Need to Come Back

Reboots aren’t only for movies. In the last few years we’ve seen new versions, or HD editions, of a number of classic games: Bionic Commando Rearmed, Twisted Metal, and Rocket Knight Adventures are only three examples. Coming up we’ve got Tomb Raider, XCOM, and DMC: Devil May Cry. Thanks to the ever-increasing love of digital distribution systems like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network, reboots and remakes with similar game-play to their originals are easy to distribute and can be sold at a lesser price. Sure, some of them have failed – 2009’s Bionic Commando was a bit of a mess, equally so Golden Axe: Beast Rider – but there is hope out there for the forgotten franchises of gaming. Here’s a rundown of the series I would love to see return.

 

Road Rash

For years, the Road Rash games were my favourite racing games. Brutal, fast, exciting, and with a killer soundtrack, they were everything that a nineties racer needed to be. But, we’ve not had a Road Rash game since 2003, when Road Rash: Jail Break was ported to the Game Boy Advance. The original games are still a hell of a lot of fun to play, and have a real timeless quality. So, isn’t it time we had a bit of motorbike-based, road-racing, baton-smashing fun?

 

Streets of Rage

Speaking of brutal games, Streets of Rage was one of the best series on the original Mega Drive/Genesis. Taking on gangs of street thugs, Streets of Rage was part of that now-forgotten genre of the side-scrolling beat ‘em up. We had a sequel-of-sorts in Fighting Force on the original Playstation, a Streets of Rage update in all but name, but no actual update to the series. Given the recent resurgence of side-scrolling fighting games, such as Scott Pilgrim and the Final Fight rerelease, this is the perfect time to see a return for Streets of Rage.

 

Wizards & Warriors

Remember Rare? They were those totally awesome dudes who made titles such as Goldeneye, Donkey Kong 64, Killer Instinct, and Perfect Dark. Well, like I said in my last retro games review, they got started out on the NES. Wizards & Warriors was a series of very fun yet incredibly infuriating action-adventure games. Three were released on the NES, and one of the Game Boy. Since Acclaim’s demise, the rights now sit with Throwback games, but unfortunately they have no plans for a remake right now.

“Have at thee, evil moth creature!”

 

Flashback

Flashback is still one of the most stunning, immersive games around. A platformer with plenty of puzzle and action elements, it was one of the classics of the 16-bit era. Known for its absolutely fantastic, motion-captured visuals, people often forget just how brilliant this game is. We’ve seen a release of Another World, Flashback’s sister game, for iOS and Android, but it would be absolutely fantastic to see Flashback return to come consoles, either as a HD update or as a brand new game.

 

Heart of Darkness

Another platformer from the maker of Another World, Heart of Darkness was one of the best games on the Playstation. After your dog is kidnapped (or should that be dog-napped) by dark shadow beings, you go hunting after them. A simple, linear game, but plenty of fun and with a few gory moments, Heart of Darkness made big steps for cinematic storytelling on home consoles. Unfortunately, because of the in-fighting and fallout from the bankruptcy of Amazing Studios, it’s probably unlikely that Heart of Darkness will ever see another release.

 

Strider

Oh Capcom. You know I love you really. You’ve given us such wonders as Mega Man, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Bionic Commando, and all those totally fucking awesome NES-era Disney games. But you should stop being such an incredible tease. Strider Hiryu is a playable character in the Marvel vs. Capcom games, so I know you haven’t forgotten about him.  Why not get him out of your intellectual property draw, dust him off, and let him run free with a new game? Oh, and while you’re at it, a modernised Mega Man game would be lovely, too.

Only total badasses are allowed in pictures as cool as this.

 

Arcanum

Sometimes I think I am the only person who played this. Published by Sierra, Arcanum is a steampunk isometric role-playing game released in 2001. Playing in a style similar to the Forgotten Realms RPGs or the original Fallout games, you play as the lone survivor of a zeppelin crash, forced to survive in a harsh world. The best thing about the game, though, is the magic vs. technology dynamic that vastly changes the game world. Given that steampunk is still seen as very cool by video game and geek communities (unless I am completely out of the loop), now would be a perfect time to bring back this universe.

 

Planescape: Torment

Speaking of isometric RPGs, Planescape: Torment is one of the best. Developed by Black Isle and using the same engine as Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, it gives the player a strange, dark world quite different from the other Dungeons & Dragons universes. In spite of great critical acclaim at the time, Planescape: Torment has been forgotten about in the years since its 1999 release. However, Overhaul Games, the creators of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, have said that if that HD remake is successful, then other games from Black Isle’s back catalogue could get the same enhanced treatment. Here’s hoping.

 

Alfred Chicken

Originally released on the Game Boy, and then ported to the NES, Amiga, and Super Nintendo, Alfred Chicken is a puzzle-platformer where you need to release a number of balloons before being allowed into the next stage. Was there a plot? Damned if I remember. But it had surreal visuals, strange characters, and completely absorbing game-play. The last game released was in 2001 on the Playstation, but I think the world needs more bright red chickens solving puzzles.

You look as confused as I am, Al.

 

Toe Jam & Earl

Finally, two of the most hip and happening characters of the nineties. They’re all the way live! They’re the bomb! They’re out of this world! If you don’t agree, talk to the hand, dude! The first two Toe Jam & Earl games were brilliant. Both were co-op games but were incredibly different: the first being a top-down collection game, the other a platformer. What did they have in common? A sense of humour lampooning nineties culture and brilliant visuals and game-play. There was a third game released on the original Xbox, but surely it’s time for a bit of colour and a bit of humour to return to video games.

 

That’s all for now. Finally, you may have noticed a wee bit of a gap between this post and my last one. Let me just say that there are some interesting things afoot that will hopefully come to fruition soon.

Next time: another retro games review.

Why I Love The 90s: The Original Video Game Movies

I have a compulsion to watch every video game film I can find. I know most of them are trash, about 98% of them are directed by Uwe Boll, and they deviate crazily from the source material, but I can’t help but track them down, just to see how bad they are. I can count the number of passable video game movies on one hand. The only video game film that I think of as ‘good’ is Silent Hill.

Pyramid Head is a busy guy.

However, there are still plenty of enjoyable shit movies from the early days. Let’s have a look at the pioneers of the sub-genre and all of their flaws.

 

Super Mario Bros

Awww yeah! Super Mario Bros is the one that started it all. It’s a horrible, horrible mess of a film: part kid’s comedy, part action, part Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk nightmare. Bob Hoskins puts on a brilliant Brooklyn accent as Mario and John Leguizamo plays a snotty teenage Luigi. In spite of all its problems, I still love this movie. Dennis Hopper is brilliant as King Koopa, there are about ten billion quotable lines and some really fun set pieces. Hell, it starts with a couple of dinosaurs talking in New Yoik accents. Sure, it’s a bad film, and has nothing to do with the games, but it sits comfortably – and brilliantly – in the so-bad-it’s-good section of my movie library.

 

Double Dragon

We’ve all played Double Dragon, right? A kidnapped girl leads two brothers to go kick the crap out of a gang and generally be total badasses. The obvious choice for such a simple, dumb story, then is to add a bunch of jargon about a magical amulet and evil overlords. Throw the bad guy from Terminator 2 and Alyssa Milano into the mix and you’re sure to win an Oscar, right? Well, not quite. But you do get an awful movie full of 90s clichés and some awful performances. Kudos to them for making Marian, the girlfriend from the game, into an active character though.

 

Street Fighter

This film can be summed up entirely in a single casting choice: the lead character is Guile, a man so American he has the star-spangled banner tattooed on his arm. Who’s the best person to play this all-USA dude? Why, the Belgian actor and roundhouse-kicker Jean Claude Van Damme, of course! The movie-makers managed to squeeze a load of the characters from Street Fighter 2 in, which certainly deserves credit, but it means that the plot is completely insane. It all looks incredibly tacky, too. What saves it? Why, a brilliant performance from the late, great Raul Julia as M. Bison of course! It was his last movie role and it’s worth the cost of the DVD alone. Well, that and seeing Kylie Minogue acting. Yup.

 

Mortal Kombat

Aside from Silent Hill, I actually think Mortal Kombat is the best video game movie. It’s trashy and dumb, but it’s just so much darn fun. It’s also got a plot that kind of makes sense (well, in comparison to the likes of Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter), and who needs acting talent when you’ve got wise-cracking, shades-wearing kung fu heroes punching four-armed monsters in the bollocks? Great fight scenes, awesome special effects, awful one-liners: this movie has it all. Unfortunately, the sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation isn’t quite as good.

 

Wing Commander

Last and possibly least is 1999’s Wing Commander. The games had a great cast – with Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell in the brilliant Wing Commander III – and what better way to continue that trend than with the magnificent Freddie Prinze Jr. Ahem. The movie follows the usual plot of the plucky young rookies who manage to save humanity whilst being very cool and relatable for the film’s target demographic.

 

After these trendsetting films, the video game film adaptation trend really kicked off, particularly after the big success of the Resident Evil franchise. But for me, these 90s films are very interesting to watch back. In fact, I would rather watch Super Mario or Mortal Kombat than the likes of Max Payne or Hitman any day of the week.

Seriously, how can you ever beat scenes like this?

A Beginner’s Guide to Creepypasta

If you read the blog regularly, or follow me on Twitter/Facebook, then you’ll see that I mention Creepypasta an awful lot. What is this mysterious and oddly-named phenomenon? Well, I’m here to give you a crash course on all things freaky and fusili-related.

Creepypasta is, quite simply, a type of horror short story, often found on message boards or blogs. Sometimes the subject matter will be something in internet or geek culture – a videogame (with Zelda, Pokémon or Minecraft being particular favourites), a television show (Spongebob Squarepants, My Little Pony, The Simpsons etc) , or a specific website or online video.

No, not THAT kind of online video!

Typically, the author of the Creepypasta will have received a mysterious email, picked up a second-hand videogame, or have ‘stumbled across’ something when online. Other times, though, the stories are simple, up-front horror fiction with a slight difference in writing style – predominantly towards first-hand experience from a first person perspective.

What I love about Creepypasta is how it seems to have become the online equivalent of telling scary stories around the camp fire. You’ll find threads on message boards based entirely around Creepypasta and frightening images – and even message boards set up just for the paranormal: 4chan’s /x/, and Reddit’s /r/nosleep and /r/creepy for instance. You’ll get internet users trying to scare the pants off each other, or even reading just to get a kick out of the stories.

Another interesting thing about Creepypasta is the way that it uses other media other than prose – video, photo, and audio in particular. Say you’re reading about a forgotten TV show from the author’s childhood; what better way to make it more real than to provide footage of said show? Or maybe you read about someone getting sent a weird audio file from an old friend – along with the post, there could be the audio file attached.

All in all, reading Creepypasta is a unique and fun experience. As it’s an uncensored, unedited form of writing, sometimes you’ll come across poorly-written – or even worse, boring – stories. Sometimes it’s actually scary. Other times it’s deliberately funny, making fun of the many clichés that have already infested the genre.

“Oh, wow it’s another person that’s found a haunted copy of Mario 64. I wonder how many haunted videogames are out there!”

Here are a few of my favourite Creepypasta stories:

Candle Cove

The members of a message board discuss the mysterious kids TV show Candle Cove. An intrepid youtuber also found footage of the show and posted it online here.

Ben (Haunted Majora’s Mask)

The biggest, and most well-known, of the videogame horror stories. A video-game enthusiast finds a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. But there’s something wrong with the game’s save files. Very long, with video included, the payoff is definitely worth it. This link includes all the videos in chronological order for the story. For other examples see Pokémon Creepy Black and Herobrine.

Gateway of the Mind

An example of an original Creepypasta idea. A experiment to try and find, and talk, to god leads to a unexpected results. Video here.

Squidward’s Suicide

The urban legend of a missing, terrifying Spongebob Squarepants episode. Also see Suicide Mouse.

Normal Porn for Normal People

An internet user gets sent a link to a disturbing site called Normal Porn for Normal People. He shares his findings as the nature of the videos rapidly spirals.

Pale Luna

A story from the 1980s about a computer game named Pale Luna, shared solely in the San Francisco Bay area. The game has been recreated here.

Interested in finding more? Well, here are some of the best places to find Creepypasta online:

4chan’s /x/ – Plenty of paranormal stuff here. Bear in mind it’s 4chan, so watch out.

/r/nosleep – If you like what you’ve read so far, this subreddit is made up of people telling scary stories.

creepypasta.wikia.com – A wiki full of Creepy stories.

inuscreepystuff.blogspot.co.uk – Blog with a very nice Creepypasta collection.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this brief look at things that go bump online. In a future blog post I’m going to share with you all some of my favourite non-Creepypasta-but-still-interwebz-based chills. Before then, though, there’s some film that’s coming out about some nutjob vigilante who dresses in a ridiculous costume and beats the crap out of people.

You probably haven’t heard of it.

Why I Love The 90s: Violent Videogames

Violence has always had some kind of place in videogame culture. A lot of the time you are either the hunter or the hunted; from the extermination of invading forces in Space Invaders, the prevention of the apocalypse in Missile Command, and even the mindless destruction of various fungal and animal creatures in Super Mario Bros (har har).

It was in the 90s, though, that the world really seemed to take notice of it. Whether it was the more realistic graphics, the increase in widespread popularity, or the fact that violence in other media had gotten stale to argue about (“oh look, another newspaper article about violent movies. BORING!”), it was in the 16-bit era that videogame nasties caused a stir.

The Toxic Avenger had a goddamn toy and cartoon series

It must have been hell for a parent. As a kid, though? It was pure, unadulterated bliss.

So, here’s my pick of some of the most important – and some of the best – ultra-violent videogames from the 1990s.

 

Mortal Kombat

Like most kids of my generation, Mortal Kombat was the first real taste I had of a super-violent game. There was stuff in this game that was frickin’ awesome: ripping off heads (with spine attached), tearing out hearts, kicking people into spike pits, or burning your opponent to a crisp. Of course, knowing how to do those moves was entirely different to getting your ass kicked and having it done to you.

But Mortal Kombat was special for more than just the fatality moves. Every meaty punch and kick made a gush of ketchup-like blood from your enemy. It was ridiculous, marvellous, and amazingly realistic for a game of its time. It also rang alarm bells for concerned parents across the world.

I would give this game four Helen Lovejoy’s out of five.

 

NARC

This game taught me to respect the law. That is, if the law consists of two badass awesome dudes in a fast car who shoot up junkies in overcoats and mullet-bearing drug dealers. An interesting game mechanic was that you got more points for arresting a suspect than killing them outright. A game mechanic rarely used when one of the options is to ‘blow everything up with a rocket launcher’.

This game was originally released in 1988 but I didn’t see it anywhere until it hit home consoles in 1990. I’ve never completed this bitch of a game though, because of the hard-as-a-box-of-Danny-Dyer’s-nails final boss, Mr Big. Mr Big also happens to be Grade-A Nightmare Fuel:

 

Wu Tang: Shaolin-Style

Did you know that the Wu Tang Clan released a videogame back in 1999? Well, you do now. It is possibly the most concentrated mix of things parents hate in a single form: videogames, violence, bad language, dangerous weapons, and rap music.

“Stick around!” “Knife to meet you!” etc

Heavily controversial before its release, the game allowed for four players to pummel the crap out of each other on one screen. It lead to a game later on in this list, but most importantly probably paved the way for other ‘vanity’ projects like 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand.

Wait, is that a good thing?

 

Carmageddon

I have lost years of my life to this game. Released in 1997 (the same year as the original Grand Theft Auto), it is still one of the most notorious videogames in history. You take part in a gladiatorial-future-nightmare-race in the style of Death Race 2000, and are given three directives: win the race normally, win by killing all your opponent racers, or win by killing all the pedestrians in the stage.

Yeah. You read the last one right. This point caused huge problems for certain countries, and in certain nations the game was either banned, or forced to make drastic changes, with pedestrians either turned into green-blooded zombies or into robots.

Interestingly, the game is coming back to us in the form of an Android/iPhone release in the near future. Hang on to yer helmet…

 

Lethal Enforcers and Night Trap

1992 was one of the most important years in videogames – if only for the constant debate over the classification of violent and ‘unsuitable’ games in an industry primarily aimed at children. It also led to the final classification of the two biggest competitors in the videogame market. In 1992, Mortal Kombat was released. Nintendo, for their Super NES console, took the blood and gore out of the game. Sega, though, kept it in.

90s trash talking is the best kind of trash talking.

Quite simply, Nintendo kept their foundation as the family-friendly company, whilst Sega came out as the ‘cool yet reckless’ option. What games were released on Sega consoles the same year? Well, Lethal Enforcers and Night Trap. Two incredibly different games that faced the ire of the tabloid press for their unsuitable content.

Lethal Enforcers was a lightgun game in the style of Time Crisis, whilst Night Trap was more of a point-and-click-thing that a) wasn’t really full of violence and b) was awful. But since it had video clips and kind-of-scantily-clad women, it was clearly much more dangerous than alcopops for British schoolchildren.

 

Thrill Kill

A game so violent, so controversial, that it was never even published. Thrill Kill was a four-player fighter with extreme violence and sexual content. The plot consisted of four damned souls fighting in a tournament to win reincarnation. So, what choice of character do you have?

If you choose anyone other than the midget on stilts there’s something wrong with you.

Each of the characters has their own Thrill Kills, in the style of Mortal Kombat’s fatalities. So, the hillbilly who fights with the severed leg of one of his victims can use it to make his opponent explode. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the game was cancelled because of its content.

Interestingly, the engine for the game was used to create Wu Tang: Shaolin-Style. Only that had murderous plastic surgeons and dominatrixes replaced with rappers and stuff.

 

Doom

Let’s finish with the granddaddy of ‘em all, though. No Doom, no Call of Duty. No Unreal Tournament. No Half-Life. No goddamn first person shooters ever. It’s a beast of a game, one of the most influential games ever, and it’s brutal. It’s literally you versus the demons of hell.

One of the most modded games ever, Doom has made it onto pretty much every home console and still has a community to this day.

Not only that, but it’s had some great sequels and…erm…this:

So maybe not all great.

 

I’ll leave it there for now. Up next – some more horror movies you might want to see.

Why I Love The 90s: Dinosaurs!

In early 1990s, it became apparent that people were, like, so yesterday. Animals? Like, hello! 1985 is calling and they want their present-day snoozefest back! You know what’s cool? What’s hip? Things that had died 65 million years ago.

I’m sure you remember this cultural trend. Dinos were pretty much everywhere. Films, comics, cartoons, video games – if you were a kid then you probably owned at least three dinosaur-related things and loved them.

Of course, some of it was good, and some of it was bad. So – let your old pal Rob take you on a whirlwind tour of the best (and worst) dinosaur offerings.

Let’s start with the big hitters: In 1988, we had The Land Before Time, an animated movie from the mighty Don Bluth, and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. The movie was fantastic, heartwarming, and more than a little sad. A great Don Bluth animated adventure. It was, unfortunately, followed by about ten thousand sequels.

The Land Before Time 27: Littlefoot goes to the Podiatrist

TLBT can be seen as the granddaddy of the whole movement. It predates most of the major players and was a huge, huge success. However, the biggest Dinosaur-themed event was obviously this:

DA DA DAAA DAA DAAA, DA DA DAAA DAA DAAA, DA DA DAAAAAAAA, DA DA DAAAAAAA!

Jurassic Park was awesome. It’s still one of my favourite films. It’s still one of the best blockbuster movies ever. It had everything a kid needed: adventure, wonder, graphic violence, harm being done to annoying kids, brilliant hats, helicopters…not going to lie, I am still excited about the possibility of Jurassic Park 4.

Between the two, there were several other dinosaur adventures of…mixed results.

 

Dinosaurs!

“You know what would be funny? A sitcom about Dinosaurs! They can be played by New Yorkers in giant suits! And they can be really creepy!”

“Yeah that’s totally a good idea…wait, how shall we end the show? Oh I know, with the FRICKIN’ DINOPOCALYPSE! That totally won’t scar people for life!”

 

Barney The Dinosaur!

I never really ‘got’ Barney to be perfectly honest. He had the cold, dead eyes of a killer. I felt as though his show was a little like Hotel California.

“You can never leave, children!”

For me, the best thing Barney did was help to inspire Death To Smoochy (one of the most underrated movies ever made, do check it out).

 

Denver, The Last Dinosaur!

Here’s one you may not know, or may have a vague, subconscious memory of. Let the title sequence refresh your memory. Warning: contains a GUITAR PLAYING DINOSAUR and many awesome 90s pop-culture references.

 

Dino-Riders!

So. Much. Awesome. Seriously, just look at this:

The tag-line of the toy/cartoon was ‘HARNESS THE POWER OF DINOSAURS!’

The only way this could be improved is if Batman was somehow involved. I know the show was made to try and sell the toys, but quite frankly, I don’t care. It didn’t do Transformers any harm.

 

Extreme Dinosaurs!

Speaking of cartoons to sell toy lines, here is Extreme Dinosaurs, one of the many ‘we want to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ series about. There will be more on that phenomenon in a later post. But for now, enjoy some brilliant wisdom from these anthropomorphised cool 90s Dinodudes:

(FYI, I think that using the phrase ‘Cretaceous!’ to mean ‘awesome’ is brilliant)

 

Theodore Rex!

Cyberpunk and dinosaurs team up to bring this crapheap of a film. That same duo was tried with the Super Mario Bros movie in 1993, to similar results.

 

Dinosaurs For Hire!

Originally a comic series, Dinosaurs For Hire came to my attention as a Sega Megadrive game. It involved Dinosaurs in sunglasses shooting people with shotguns. I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of thing dreams are made of. If you don’t agree, I think there might be something wrong with you.

 

Primal Rage!

As part of the super-violent videogame trend that was personified by the likes of Mortal Kombat and Lethal Enforcers, along came this beat ‘em up where you could pit dinosaurs against giant apes and the like. It was…passable in my opinion. I never saw it in an arcade up apparently the arcade version was a lot better than the one that hit the home consoles.

Notice ‘Ape Skull Mountain’ in the background

 

To finish, I’ll leave you with this, the best thing to come out of the dinosaur craze: the music from the first stage of Jurassic Park on the NES. It’s actually the BEST SONG EVER.

 

Thanks for reading. Let me know what your favourite dinosaur-related things were from the 90s! Up next: something videogame-related.