Weekly Flashback: McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure

Sega Genesis

 

“Corporate Deathburger – Ronald McDonald!” – MDC

 

Every flashback I’ve done so far has been for nostalgic games that I liked (except for that conniving StarTropics)

What I originally wanted to do with these was blog about older, shitty games. They had to be old and especially stupid. I figured: the shittier – the funnier . .

Well, after playing this fucking treat, McDonald’s Treasureland Adventure, I checked my blood pressure and decided to finally write about a truly shitty game for once. A mistake, maybe.

I realized that shittier doesn’t equal funnier at all. It usually just equals shittier. One minute this game has me laughing like a mongolian idiot at how ridiculous it is — the next i’m spit-yelling at everything in my living room. My iced tea — out the window.

Review: Super Quickhook for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch

In 2009, a little Indiana Jones-type character with a large collection of hats captured the hearts of iPhone owners everywhere.  The game I’m referring to is Jeremy Orlando/Rocketcat Games‘ Hook Champ.  Hook Champ was the definition of a quality iPhone game, offering easy-to-pickup, hard-to-master gameplay, along with a huge amount of levels, unlockables items, and cool hats.  For the sequel to Hook Champ, Rocketcat decided to go bigger and better with Super Quickhook. Not only does Super Quickhook expand and improve on virtually every aspect of its predecessor, it also offers a new, Canabalt-style endless mode (which is randomly generated each time you start).  I strongly believe that Super Quickhook should be the “poster-boy” of iPhone games, and if someone asked me to show them why the iPhone should be taken seriously as a handheld gaming platform, this is the game I’d show them – and they’d love it.

Weekly Flashback: Lemmings

SNES

“Smile if you love Lemmings!”

Ah, it feels great to be writing about a game so burned into my skull. Normally I would re-visit an old game before doing a ‘Flashback’ on it – making sure I remember it well enough. Not necessary this time. These little idiots with their green mushroom-cuts were a pretty integral part of my childhood, were fairly consistently referenced by my sister and I. This was probably, in most part, because of the preference my friends and I had at the time for our own hair to be cut into mushrooms.

Terraria: Day Two

Note: Check out part one of our Terraria diary here.

So we knew that building shelter was going to be our main focus.  We also knew that we could dig and gather resources to make better tools and weapons – we just didn’t have a clue as to exactly what we could make.

We started building the inside of our shelter – all the while expanding outward.  Our shelter was now turning into a house, but we had ambitions for a large scale castle… clearly.  We put up walls, torches, tables, doors, everything people would need to call their house a home.  Suddenly we were alerted, “Guide has arrived!”.  We had our first visitor!  The Guide offered us some assistance, and told us what we could craft with the items we currently had.  He was kind of dink, but we decided to let him stay in our house.  Only 1 night after, we had a Merchant appear, and was interested in selling us items!  We finally had a use for the gold we found from destroying green slimes!

Duke Nukem Forever PC Review

First of all, It’s only suiting that my review of Duke Nukem Forver is late.

To those of you living on Mars, Duke Nukem Forever was in development from 1996 until it was released in 2011 (Although to be fair, im sure even Martians know this).

I remember everyone debating the possibility of the game being bad, but I kept saying “Even if it IS bad, it’s Duke friggin Nukem.  I know that I’m gonna like it regardless”; I had no idea what hot water I was getting myself into.

Weekly Flashback: Blackthorne

BLACKTHORNE (SNES)

Screw World of Warcraft. Yeah, your eyes aren’t “betraying” you (get it? you better not.)

I said screw it! I meant it, too. And furthermore, I really meant “Fuck it!”. Old-school Warcraft was cool.
Well, lets not use the word ‘cool‘ if we’re being honest. Lets use ‘fun‘.

This “World of Warcraft” is a world of ancient, Chinese pecker-bum torture. Watch as this motherloving substitute for the great outdoors, the trees and the grass, devours the brains of our socially challenged. Dear, Blizzard Entertainment. What the hell do you want with the dumb-brains you’re harvesting? They’re dumb brains! Well, by the time your game is done dinking them mightily, they are.
Your true greatest accomplishment? I think you know full well. We ALL know! Don’t we?! WHO’S WITH ME?! CHARRGGEE!

Review: The King of Fighters-i for iPhone

Up until now, Street Fighter 4 has dominated the fighting game genre on the iOS devices, delivering a near-console experience on handheld devices.  I love Street Fighter 4 on my fourth generation iPod Touch, and play it with my little brother all the time, however there is one glaring flaw with the game: the virtual stick.  It’s an inherent problem with the iOS devices – with no physical buttons to press, the only option left is to add buttons on the screen of device (which, as we all know, obstructs your view of the screen).  Well some iOS developers have been getting the virtual stick right (Gameloft, for example), Street Fighter 4’s virtual stick was pretty horrible.  Most of the time I’d be trying to perform an haduken but couldn’t get the precise movements correct on the janky virtual stick.  I’ve never played the King of Fighters games much, but when I saw that SNK Playmore was releasing an iOS version, I was pretty excited to see how the virtual stick would be handled, and I’m happy to report that Street Fighter 4 has a new challenger.  That’s right, The King of Fighters-i is officially the new best fighting game on the iOS platforms.

Terraria: Day One

 

The following are the events of Dave and Jordan while living in the world of Terraria.

Upon starting the game with a wooden pickaxe in hand, we decided to explore this wonderfully-pixelated world.  We soon discovered that our pickaxes could chop through mud, dirt, and stone.  After chopping through these materials, we could then place them as we wanted – we were building!  We were also givin an axe, meant to chop down trees, of course. 
Dave figured out that he could build a workbench from the wood that he collected, allowing him to craft even more items.  Unfortunately, as Dave was placing his workbench, a horrendous slime monster approached.  We swung blindly at the beast, but barely hurt it.  Not having the skills to fight yet, we failed.  We both quickly succumbed to the slimy blob, exploding in a shower of 16-bit viscera.

A green and blue slime... blue is clearly way tougher

Horrified, we soon discovered that slimes weren’t the only creatures that would plague us.
As the sun set, we had no idea what we were in for that night.  While we cheerfully pickaxed at stone and dirt, out of the shadows came a green figure.  Jordan yelled “Zombie!!!”, and then we panicked.  Harvesting supplies was no longer our main concern.  We attempted to fight off the zombies, however we were too weak and were getting overrun.  After building a dirt hut to cover in, we watched the zombies trying to find a way in.  Then we saw a small silhouette of a baseball fly through the sky. 
“what the hell was that?” said Jordan.
“That…. looked like a floating eyeball”

It was clear we would have to do one specific thing: build ourselves a house where we can seek refuge from the monsters in our world

Zombies!!

As the sun rose, our stress and panic wore off.  After chopping some stone blocks to build our house with, we learned that we could craft a fireplace at the workbench using wood and some gel we obtained from finally kicking the shit out of the slimes. 

We had finally created what we needed to assure our survival, but we still needed some type of shelter.  Instead of a house, we decided on a castle.  Not just any castle, a monstrous castle, dubbed “new winterfell” out of an affection for Game of Thrones. Since we had a theme to follow, we knew what to do. An ancient forest. A garden. A conference/throne room. Towers with weird discs on the top. It would all be built on the hallowed grounds of the north. 
However, all we had was a dirt hut. 
We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us…

Weekly Flashback: Road Rash series

      

For something different this week, lets do a trilogy. And what a trilogy! The Road Rash (Sega Genesis) games.

Illegal crotch-rocket street racing, whipping dudes named “Slug” in the neck with chains and bats, police brutality, a lesbian who wants nothing more than to beat your ass in. . . What more convincing would I have needed to play and love these puppies as an adolescent?

Super Stickman Golf Review

Super Stickman Golf ($0.99) is a 2d physics-based game by Jordan Schidlowski (don’t you love how the Appstore has brought back one-man game development?) and distributed by Noodlecake games.  The description on the iTunes Appstore states “Super Stickman Golf is not just another 2D golf platformer, it is THE 2D GOLF PLATFORMER. Be Warned: VERY ADDICTIVE!”  Although most Appstore descriptions devolve into hyperbole, this one is actually pretty accurate.  Super Stickman Golf combines the recent trend of physics-based gameplay with the game of golf, turning the game into just what the description calls it: “The 2D Golf Platformer.”