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]]> 08 May 2008 07:12:55 California Games is a 1987 Epyx sports video game for many home computers and video game consoles. Branching from their popular Summer Games and Winter Games series, this game consisted of some sports purportedly popular in California.

The game sold very well, topping game selling charts for winter months. It also got very positive reaction from reviewers. Many consider California Games to be the last classic Epyx sport game. After this game, the staff in Epyx changed.

]]> 30 Jun 2007 11:38:02 Rampage World Tour was a reinvention of the original arcade classic; created for Midway Mfg. by the original designers, Jeff Nauman and Brian Colin and the crew at Game Refuge Inc.

The game follows George Lizzy and Ralph as they smash and fight their way through hundreds of cities around the Globe. This update game added dimension to the characters andadvanced the storyline, but stayed true to the user-friendly "there's no wrong way to play it" gameplay mechanic of the original.

Though incredibly violent, the game treats all interaction with a cartoony, blood-free, tongue-in-cheek approach that keeps the action light-hearted and appealing to players of all ages.

This "Sequal" has spun off a number of additional "Rampages" on a number of platforms .. but many feel that RWT was the best of the lot.

]]> 12 Jun 2007 11:06:40 Joust's simple controls, and the fact that it was one of the few games two players could play together, helped make this arcade game a hit.

You play a knight mounted on an ostrich. You must use your lance to joust against wave after wave of enemies. The only controls you have are to flap your wings and to move left and right, making it quite easy to get into the game. You may defeat an opponent by colliding with them with your lance higher than theirs.

When you beat an enemy, they drop an egg. If you let it hatch by not collecting it, it will spawn a tougher enemy than the one who dropped the egg.

Other dangers include a lava pit at the bottom of the screen, a lava troll which tries to drag you into the lava pit, and a very tough-to-beat pterodactyl which appears if you take too long on a level.

Designer: John Newcomer
Released: 1982

]]> 13 May 2007 09:11:30 Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow, also known as Donald Starring in Maui Mallard in Europe, is a platform game, released in 1996 for the PC, Game Boy, Super NES(SNES) and Mega Drive/Genesis consoles. The game was developed by Eurocom and released by Disney Interactive. The game was one of the first games to be released under Disney Interactive.

Maui Mallard (played by Donald Duck) is a medium-boiled detective visiting a tropical island when the mysterious Shabum Shabum idol goes missing. Shabum Shabum is considered the island's native guardian spirit, and unless the idol is recovered, the whole island will explode. Maui is put on the case, and his investigations lead him through a creepy mansion to a native village, where Maui is sacrificed and thrown into a volcano as a sacrifice to the native gods. Maui survives the volcano, and the islanders put him through the "test of duckhood", which Maui passes, gaining the natives' trust. The natives tell Maui that the only one who knows where Shabum Shabum is has died long since, and Maui goes through the land of the dead to escort his soul into rest.

Besides typical platform game gameplay (running around, jumping from platform to platform), one of the game's most distinctive gameplay features is allowing to switch the player character's form to suit one's needs. The player begins the game as Maui, whose only mean of self-defence is an insect-launching pistol that can launch several forms of bugs, some of them combined for greater effect. However, once the player reaches the second level, Maui transforms into Cold Shadow, his ninja alter ego, who defends himself with short-range attacks using a staff. Cold Shadow's staff is also primarily used to explore the level further, such as climbing a narrow tunnel. After the second level, the player can switch back and forth between Maui and Cold Shadow at will, provided he has enough ninja tokens for the transformation. The amount of ninja tokens Maui or Cold Shadow holds determines Cold Shadow's strength when played as him. Some levels of the game, however, prevent Maui from transforming at all, as Cold Shadow cannot bungee jump on vines, for example, which forces the player to use Maui throughout the level.

]]> 02 Mar 2007 07:45:23 Batman Forever is a beat 'em up game based on the movie of the same name. The Super NES, Sega Mega Drive, and Game Boy versions were developed by Acclaim Studios London and published by Acclaim Entertainment the Sega Game Gear and PC versions were developed by Probe Entertainment. The player plays as either Batman or Robin. There is also a fighting game mode called "training mode" where the player can play as Batman, Robin, or any of the enemies found throughout the game against either a computer-controlled opponent, against a second player, or cooperatively against two computer opponents.

Unlike most beat 'em up games, Batman Forever's controls are largely based on move lists and key sequences more common in fighting games. Some gadget moves involve moving away from the enemy right before pressing a punch or kick button, which creates problems since the game only keeps the players facing enemies if they're close enough to each other. Those moves would often just turn the player around and cause the move to not execute at all, and while most are close-range abilities anyway, this presents a more major problem with Robin's Heat Gun, which would appear to be intended as a long-range projectile attack to complement Batman's Electric Pellet.

The gadget list is selected by the player each level, with three standard gadgets for each character and two gadgets selected from a list. There are also four hidden "blueprint" gadgets.

The Super NES and Genesis/Mega Drive versions of the game present very glaring differences. The two most prominent ones are the constant load screens (where the game will display "HOLD ON") on the Super NES version, and the much more forgiving controls on the Genesis version. Many reviewers cite such difficulty with the Super NES controls that they couldn't even figure out how to use the gadgets, even with the move list in the manual. The PC version is the same as the SNES and Genesis versions but has superior graphics.

]]> 02 Mar 2007 04:25:01 Players take the role of Harry Potter as he arrives for his first year at Hogwarts and embarks on a journey to unravel the mystery of the Philosopher's Stone. An adventure full of fun and magic, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone allows players to explore a variety of multi-layered 3D environments.

The game includes encounters with many of the characters familiar to readers of the fiction, including Harry's best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Dumbledore, and his nemesis Draco Malfoy.

]]> 14 Feb 2007 09:37:39 Early on, the development team at Midway decided to make a 3D Mortal Kombat to capitalize on the rising popularity of 3D games at the time. Midway decided to develop its own hardware, named "Zeus" from scratch however, resulting in development delays (a large amount of the game was tested on two dimensional hardware using pre-rendered characters).

As revealed in later interviews, programmer Ed Boon was particularly concerned with maintaining the gameplay feel of a 2D game but with 3D graphics. He at first was worried that there was some intrinsic property of 3D graphics that would make this impossible. Essentially, the major gameplay difference between 2D and 3D fighting games of the time, was that up to that point all 3D fighting games had attempted to somewhat simulate realistic martial arts. One of the reasons this was done was to take advantage of the fluid keyframed and motion captured animation that was now possible using 3D models. For example, in Virtua Fighter, a real martial artist was filmed performing the moves, and this movement was imposed on the 3D model in the game. Thus, while a punch in a 2D game might be a rapidly responding move with two frames of animation, a punch in a 3D game might have a delay between when the button was pressed and when the opponent was hit, owing to the realistic animation.

This delay however fundamentally changed the gameplay experience. Boon eventually decided to use the non realistic 2D rates of animation and movement, simply imposed onto 3D graphics. Thus the gameplay experience is nearly identical to the 2D versions of Mortal Kombat. While this was attempted before with the Street Fighter EX series, that series used more complex animation which did change the gameplay somewhat. Some critics however, were disappointed that Mortal Kombat 4 did not play like other popular 3D games of the time.

This game introduced 8 new characters, weapons, and a limit inducer to stop people from having unlimited combos

]]> 10 Feb 2007 12:17:05 Mortal Kombat 3 is the continuation of the Mortal Kombat series, offering 15 playable Characters and new moves and fatalities. It is this game that Johnny Cage offically died, that a new Sub Zero arose to avenge his brother, and the appearance of the 3 cyborgs

]]> 09 Feb 2007 07:04:54 In this sequel to Grand Theft Auto, you play in a future city dominated by a number of gangs, which you can play out against each other.

]]> 09 Dec 2006 07:21:13 The first game in the popular GTA series lets you run rampant through Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City.

]]> 09 Dec 2006 07:07:33