Remember back in the 90s after Mortal Kombat? Like any good gaming movement, developers and publishers sought to imitate MK. If it wasn’t the gruesome fatalities, it was the digitized graphics, and in many cases, it was both. Often times however, the characters would look ridiculous and the gameplay would suck. Who could forget ‘classics’ such as Way of the Warrior, Survival Arts, and Shadow: War of Succession? Well, Creative Edge Studio’s Bikini Karate Babes brings back those good old days. While the eye candy is only slightly more attractive than those great games of the past, the game control is the definition of clunky and unresponsive.
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Turba is a puzzle game that uses your music as the basis of its gameplay. You create and clear clusters of blocks as the game vibrates to your music. There are several unlocakbles, including new modes and special abilities. The Ascend mode in particular is a real challenge, especially when played on one of the higher difficulty levels. You can create an account in order to post your score to online leaderboards. While the game isn’t as mind blowing as Audiosurf or even Beat Hazard, it’s still a fun and cheap way to listen to your music

This odd Super Nintendo game can pretty much be described as Araknoid meets Zelda. Although it doesn’t look too much graphically, it has a unique style of gameplay that you just don’t see in action games. Playing as a firestriker known as Slader, you make use of the Traillight (which is basically a fancy ball) to stop an evil archmage. Along the way, you’ll battle monsters and rescue any comrades you meet along the way. You’ll be accompanied by a mage which acts as a goalie. You can play co-op mode with another player, or battle up to three of your friends in competitive multiplayer modes. Hopefully it won’t be much longer until someone brings this game to virtual console. Better yet, why not a 3D remake using the Wii remote?

The Witcher is based on Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s collection of short stories. When the original version of the Witcher was released in 2007, it showed a lot of promise. However, a number of in-game issues bought it down. This enhanced edition of the game, released in 2008, fixes most of these issues, and includes new content. For people who already own the original version of the game, these enhancements are available as a free download on the website. For those who haven’t played the original version of the game, this is the perfect package, and it’s an amped-up version of one of the best PC role playing games in recent years. In the game, players take the role of Geralt of Rivia. Geralt is a Witcher, who is a traveling monster hunter for hire. Geralt is one of the few remaining witchers left in the world, and he is stricken with amnesia. When a group of assassins attacks the witcher strong hold, Geralt travels throughout the world to find out why, get revenge, and hopefully find out the truth behind his amnesia.
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Data East’s Sly Spy makes no attempt to hide the fact that it’s inspired by James Bond, although it is a fun game regardless. Playing as an agent (whom you are asked to assign a 3-digit number at the beginning of the game), you are tasked to save America from terrorists. While most of the game takes place in a side scrolling view similar to Namco’s Rolling Thunder, some of the game’s levels mix up the formula adding variety. When you start the game, you’re skydiving while shooting at the bad guys, and in another level you ride a motor cycle. The boss battles are pretty easy, and there are James Bond references throughout the game.

Sly Spy is one of those games that while it may not be anything Earth-shattering, it represented every thing that was cool about arcade games. Just like Big Karnak and Flashgal, Sly Spy would have benefited from a NES or Sega Genesis release. This game is available on Data East’s Wii classic arcade compilation disc, so now you have another chance to check out this game.

While most other independently developed games feature a quirky art style, Defense Grid features high production values and an interesting twist on the tower defense genre. Designed by Age of Empires 2 lead designer Mark Terrano, Defense Grid is an easy-to-play tower defense game which makes use of the Gamebryo engine (used in Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Civilization IV among other titles). You team up with a sentient computer artificial intelligence in order to thwart an alien invasion. You place a variety of towers, and as needed you can upgrade them provided you have the right amount of resources. Space on the grid is limited, so it’s up to you to figure out what towers to place and how to place them. The base game has only 20 levels, but you can replay them in challenge mode. There are also map packs available for .99 each which extend the game, although it would really benefit from a level editor. On Steam, you can purchase the game and all the map packs for $15 making this a good value. Defense Grid is a fun and addictive game, and at its low price, it almost manages to give most full-priced games a run for their money.

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

The early 90s bought gamers a new genre of video games: the one-on-one fighter. This new genre of games was the offspring of sports games and beat-em-ups. You took one fighter against another, and it was up to you to take him down. These games weren’t controlled by the simple joystick plus 1 or 2 button setups. No, there were anywhere from 3 – 6 buttons, and you performed special moves by pulling off combinations of the joystick and these buttons to pull off special attacks. The key to winning these games was mastering and utilizing these special attacks, stringing them together in combos. To the best fighting game players, this became both art and science. It wasn’t uncommon to see crowds of players standing around a heated fighting game contest that was going on at the local arcade, weather it was Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Power Instinct, or X-men. Capcom was the undisputed leader of the genre, although beside Midway’s Mortal Kombat, there was another competitor, SNK. Of all the game developers who made fighting games, SNK had the most acclaim after Capcom. The developer had released a collection of fighting games for its Neo Geo arcade system/home console, among them were Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. These two games enjoyed a deep storyline and an interesting cast of characters who were every bit as memorable as Capcom’s fighters. In 1994 however, they would release something that had never before been seen in gaming, the King Of Fighters.
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The 90s were such an awesome time for comic books (not). Who didn’t love those holo-foil stamped gimmick covers, stories about clones, female versions of our favorite heroes and villains (She-venom anyone? She-thing? *shudder*), the Ultraverse, and the legions of extreme-badass muscle bound gun-toting characters who were the bastard children of Rob Liefiled and the Batman Dark Knight Returns? Remember when they tried to replace all the popular heroes with ‘cooler’ and more badass versions of themselves which lasted all of 1 year (or 3 in the case of Spider-Man)? Remember when most of the Avengers wore generic brown jackets? Speaking of the Avengers, remember that awesome Avengers beat-em-up that Data East did some years back? Of course you do. Well, a few years after that, Data East created this semi-follow up, a fighting game that’s based on the obscure Avengers crossover Galactic Storm. Basically a poor man’s Killer Instinct with Marvel characters, Galactic Storm brings us what we loved the most about the mid-90s. Obscure second string characters, confusing storylines, and lame gimmicks.
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