Until the release of the technically fantastic, utterly huge, and gloriously lovely to look at Donkey Kong 64 for the Nintendo 64, I was a big fan of Rare’s stuff. Or at least, I thought I was. I mean, I did really, really, enjoy Banjo Kazooie. So much so that I almost completed it many times (the end boss proving too much), and even got the XBLA remake – finally 100%ing it. But looking back at their other titles, I’m not …
Ah, the Game Boy Advance. To many, a portable SNES without enough buttons to effectively be a portable SNES, and one with a screen invisible in all but the glow of a 100W lightbulb. That didn’t stop it from having arguably the best catalogue of games of any system, however, and with the lit screen of the GBA SP (further refined in the GB Micro), it became and remains my favourite handheld ever. And I loved my DS and 3DS a lot. …
I’ve often said that I love buying games that are bizarre and obscure. Usually, they’re crap – which often explains why they’re pretty obscure. Sometimes, though, they’re great. By obscure I mean they’re pretty much unheard of to the general gaming public. This is either because they’re for a machine never released in whatever region of the world they’re in, or the game bombed so nobody bought it (these games aren’t always bad, surprisingly), or even just that nobody forgot …
I’ve been gaming for a long time. This is obvious to anyone who has perused the rest of my site (the Gaming Diary and Museum both give clues to this). I’ve played a lot of games. Hundreds. Thousands, in fact. It would be naïve to assume that, having played so many games, gaming ideas are only ever used once, and so each game is an entirely unique experience. This is, of course, not true. Some things come up all the …
In 2001, the Game Boy Advance was released. I was pretty keen on getting one (and I did, as soon as physically possible), but before it came out I chased up a few places to find out how much it was going to cost. I sent this to “Madeira Games” on the 17th March, 2001: How much will the GBA cost? Is it a Japanese import, or is the preorder for a UK machine? How much are the games? When …
You know, this is my 2000th Gaming Diary post. 2000 posts. Amazing. Played Hexic 2 for a couple of hours this evening. First spent over an hour playing my wife at Battle Mode, but soon had to stop playing as she got good at it and began to win. Tch. It’s pretty good, and there’s a power-up dynamic to the game which I’ve not seen in any other puzzle game. Power-ups are only available at certain times, and either of …
I’ve come to the conclusion that Excite Truck is one part F-Zero GX, two parts Super Off Road, one part Project Gotham Racing and a dash of Pilotwings, all mixed together in a big pot with liberal application of the Photoshop motion blur and lens flare tools. Today, I finished all the Silver races, will at least B ranks in everything (actually, I got one S rank too), and then attempted the Gold races. And passed all them too (with …
So I did a few missions for this dodgy “government agency” guy in the desert, blowing up helicopters and buying an airstrip. Those soon ran dry, and it was back to stealing cars for Ceser in San Fierro. Very much like Gone in 60 Seconds. And, to add to Dance Theft Auto, and Splinter Nigga, not to mention the million and one further other-game-a-like sections, I get a Need fo’ Speed section. Complete with nitros and blur-o-vision. But now I’m …
