Not all games based on movies or cartoons are bad, and when the licenses expire the games disappear too! This is the Powet Top 5 Lost Licensed Games, presented by Keep Playing!

Think I missed a game? Leave a comment and let me know!

Halloween is this week, so this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics is dedicated to gaming’s original frightfest, Castlevania. More specifically, I’ll be looking at one of the franchise’s most prolific installments, Dracula X. Dracula has once again been revived, and it’s up to Richter Belmont, the latest in the line of the vampire hunting Belmont family, to destroy him. This time the stakes are higher, as Drac has kidnapped several maidens from the nearby village. Among them are Richter’s fiancee Anette, and her sister Maria. Dracula X was notable for it’s bright and crisp graphics, CD-quality audio, multiple routes through the levels, multiple endings, and the ability to play as a second character (Maria). However, despite being its critical acclaim amongst fans and reviewers, the Super CD title never saw a release outside of Japan until recently. I’ll be looking at both the original game (by way of its PSP remake), and the Super Nintendo adaptation. Although more recent entries in the series (such as the recently released Order of Ecclesia) utilize Symphony of the Night’s non-linear RPG-styled action, the classic linear gameplay seen in Dracula X still holds up even after more than a decade.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

This week on Xbox Live Arcade, “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” will be made available for download for $15.

If you pay and download this, the answer is: NO.

I finally managed to wrap up my review of the most recent in the Silent Hill series of survival-horror games with my return to video reviews.

If you can switch to the higher quality version, do so. I tried a slightly different way of presenting things than my last two videos, which help highlight my opinions alot better, but they get a wee bit obscured.

Like Encounters in Space in my $20 Game of the Week, this week’s Lost Classic, Gundam Wing: Endless Duel is one of the few good Gundam games in existence. For those of you not in the know, the Gundam Wing series takes place in the After Colony Universe, which is outside of the Universal Century universe depicted in the original Gundam series, War in the Pocket, Stardust Memory, and pretty much any other Gundam series which had been released up to that point (besides the G Gundam series, which itself takes place in its own universe, but that’s another story). Like the original Gundam series, Gundam Wing tells of a war between Earth and the space colonies. A group of young pilots wage a war against a corrupt organization which is trying to play both sides against each other. The series spawned movie, Endless Waltz, which takes place a year later and deals with the aftermath of the war. The series proved to be a favorite among fans everywhere, despite a few annoying characters here and there. Unfortunately, at the time of this game’s release(1996), Gundam, like many other classic anime properties, had no presence in North America (indeed, the Gundam Wing series wouldn’t make its U.S. debut until 2000). It goes without saying that Bandai didn’t bother with an English translation, leaving this game a favorite of importers and emulation pirates.

Endless Duel is pretty much your basic mid 90s fighting game which makes use of a preexisting intellectual property. You take your pick of several pilots and defeat the rest in a series of one on one battles. Each mobile suit has its selection of special moves. They can also hover for a short time. There is a super meter which allows players to preform more powerful versions of their special moves as well as machine gun attacks. Players can play through arcade, versus, and trial modes. Some of the music has been lifted from the show. By completing the game on hard mode, players can unlock a secret code to play as the boss. Although there isn’t much in the way of replay value, the control is responsive, the backgrounds are detailed, and the game does a good job of representing the source material.

Although Endless duel makes no huge attempt to set itself apart from the numerous other fighting games out there, it does a good job of providing fun gameplay and representing the series in interactive form. It’s doubtful that we will see this game come to Virtual Console any time soon (as Wing’s popularity has waned in favor of more recent Gundam series), but since Namco-Bandai still holds the rights to the license, there is always hope.

As one of the better games utilizing the Gundam license, Encounters in Space has a lot to offer Gundam fans, and it plays decent too. The game focuses on the Universal Century universe (which includes the One-year war from the first TV series, as well as the events of the Stardust Memory miniseries), but there are also some Easter eggs from G-Gundam, Gundam Wing, and Gundam Seed. What makes the single player modes of this game interesting is that instead of simply having one huge campaign, there are several smaller ones, each starring a different main character and having their own separate storyline. The main storyline takes players through the last half of the original TV series. Along with that, there is a game-exclusive campaign featuring an all new character and a storyline which takes place parallel to the main series. The Ace Pilot mode is a series of vignettes in which players play as different faces from the Gundam Saga. Along with a few choice members of the Earth Federation, you’ll also play as several of Zeon’s finest including Char Aznable, Anavel Gato, and even the Black Tri-Stars. There are dozens of mobile suits to choose from, and each character has their own special abilities. There is also a training mode, in which you can create a character, and train through 8 missions in order to build up his/her stats as much as possible. You can then take your pilot into a two-player versus mode, where you can build a team of any three characters using any mobile suits you wish.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

For any of you who thought the Sega Genesis no longer has any surprises and is a dead console, prepare to be sorely mistaken. It seems some people haven’t quite given up on Sega or it’s veteran consoles.

A brand new game called Pier Solar, is getting readied for a release. Set to be a huge (for Genesis) 64Mb cartridge, this game is 100% original from it’s story and characters, to its music and graphics. It’s been in the making for the last four years roughly, and is supposed to be coming out on Christmas Eve of this year, barring any delays like what pushed it back from its original Oct. 29th release date. Considering this is basically a game that was originally meant as a homebrew, a fully-working game capable of being played on a Genesis being the end result is epic.

Pier Solar is orginated from the Sega homebrew community of Eidolon’s Inn in 2004. Started as a small effort to bring the members of the site to virtual life in a little RPG, time has passed and the game has grown into something much more. Now Pier Solar is on it’s way to hopefully become a Role Playing Game maching all other great classics of the 16-bit era…..

A working demo is available for play on the game’s website. The game itself is available for pre-order in two different packages with extra goodies.
http://www.piersolar.com/

Earlier this week, I featured the actual Mega Man 9 as the $20 game of the week, so now here is the game that would have been Mega Man 9. After releasing Mega Man made a phenomenal 32-bit debut on the Saturn and Playstation with Mega Man 8, Capcom went to work on one last 16-bit Mega Man game. It wouldn’t be just a patchwork job though. Capcom pushed the limits of the Super Famicom (or SNES as we know it over here) to its limits in ways which have not been achieved even with Mega Man 7 or the first three Mega Man X games. The game would be one of the last 3rd party games released on a 16-bit system, and what a game it would have been. Unfortunately, this was 1998, well after Nintendo killed off Super Nintendo support in the US. Thus, the game saw a Japan-only release, and until recently, the only way players could see it was via emulation (which Powet does not condone by the way) or import. Even then, you had to be able to read Japanese in order to understand the story. Thankfully, along with GBA re-releases of other games in its 16-bit catalog, Capcom decided to bring this game over with them, giving North American fans the chance to experience one of Mega Man’s finest adventures of the 16-bit era.

[Read the rest of this entry…]