You put a “2” behind a game title and you’ve got a safe bet: more of the same. Its makes it easier for developers to release another game, and players get what essentially amounts to more levels of a game they already like.

But there are some that dare to be different, and turn the entire idea of franchise gaming on the ear. For the purposes of this list, games that jump between generations are omitted as upgrades and changes are expected on new hardware.

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)

The first in the series is a great linear dungeon crawler. Its proven the test of time, and started a series still going very strong today (in 2D no less!). But wow, Simon’s Quest was really different. Its much more of an open world, introduces RPG elements, and even adds a night & day passage of time. Modern Castlevania games balance elements of exploration and action well, but this was uncharted territory at the time. Castlevania III, while a fantastic refinement of the game play of the first, misses out on the stuff in Simon’s Quest.

TMNT 2: The Arcade Game (NES) [Read the rest of this entry…]

Seems SEGA isn’t out of the game just yet, and has decided to produce and release a brand new addition to their classic HotD series – House of the Dead: Overkill.

The game itself seems to be a prequel in the long-running franchise of light-gun shooters, and takes place in a small backwater town of Bayou City, where rookie AMS agent “G” finds himself and new partner Washington eventually battling with hordes of the walking dead created by a mysterious source. (three guesses as to who might have a hand in it)

Overkill appears to take a page out of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles in it’s use of the Wiimote targeting and looks to have it’s roots in the traditional on-rails gameplay of previous titles of the series. Headstrong Studios, who have taken it upon themselves to create the game, have said that they’re basing it off of old grindhouse movies, right down to the gritty film of cutscenes and the copious amounts of gore and violence that should be commonplace in anything related to hacking apart zombies.

If the trailer is a faithful depiction of the actual gameplay of the title, then I do believe we have ourselves another fine offspring of the HotD’s deliciously screwed-up family. (with HotD4 being the redheaded stepchild and HotD3 being the awkward middle-child in comparison to their elder sibling titles)

Bionic Commando Rearmed hit Xbox Live and PSN last week, so in honor of this special occasion, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will take a special look at the new game, as well as a previous entry in the series. Enjoy!

In 1987, Capcom released an arcade game called Top Secret, which we over here would know it as Bionic Commando. It was a side-scrolling platformer in which the protagonist used a grappling arm to traverse the game’s 4 levels. It wasn’t a terrible game, but it was nothing special. When an NES sequel, which was known in Japan as Top Secret: Hitler’s Revival was released the following year however, that was when the series really took off. Players took control of Nathan ‘Radd’ Spencer, who was sent behind enemy lines to rescue Super Joe from the Imperialist Nazis who sought to resurrect Adolf Hitler. Players traveled through several stages to uncover the enemy’s plan and stop them. [Read the rest of this entry…]

This year’s Otakon had a great Sailor Moon showing with 2 fan panels lead by Lilly-chan. One was for “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon”, the live action series from a few years ago, and the other was for Naoko Takeuchi, the creator of the Sailor Moon manga, among other things.

I was asked to record both videos to share with the Sailor Moon fan community over at Genvid.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Fan Panel:

Panel features Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Sakura with Kungpow and Moon Jump doing the game demo.

Naoko Takeuchi Fan Panel:

Panel features Kungpow, Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Moon Jump.

Also at this year’s convention were two Sailor Moon animators Kazuko Tadano and Hiromi Matsushita who did a great panel but my camera ate the footage.

Links to various pages mentioned in the two videos appear below.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

This is the latest in Powet Editor Zac Shipley’s series on video game culture in Madison, WI for TheDailyPage.

Joe Rheaume’s Excellent Adventure: Chronotron goes from Madison to Penny Arcade Expo
The online comic strip and blog Penny Arcade has been a leading tastemaker in the gaming world for nearly a decade now. It has reached new heights over the last five years with its own convention, the Penny Arcade Expo, held every August in Seattle. Though gamers from all over the nation will find a weekend of fun and competition at this year’s con, Madison native Joe Rheaume will be an invited guest to show his hit time travel game Chronotron. >More

Play Chronotron now.

During the 80s, Cold War hysteria was at its peak, even as the Cold War itself was slowly ending. Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed new leader of a collapsing Soviet Union, movies such as Red Dawn and Amerika scared viewers with nightmares of a fictional Soviet takeover of the United States, and sports films such as Rocky IV displayed their own subliminal stances on the situation by depicting American athletes defeating Russian and Chinese competitors. Of course video games followed suit as well. One of the most influential was Konami’s Rush’n Attack (Russian Attack – get it?). Rush’n Attack was the name given to the North American version of the 1985 arcade game Green Beret. Players took control of a nameless marine as he used his knife to defeat the enemy forces and rescue his captured comrades. The enemy soldiers came at you from all sides, and you had to fend them off or avoid them, as just one hit would kill you. This made it kind of funny, because if you actually did “rush and attack” like the title says, then you’d be defeated within seconds. You gained weapons such as pistols and flame throwers, but they had limited ammo, and before long you were back to using your knife. It wasn’t a bad game, but It was nothing mind blowing either. If anything, it could be considered a spiritual predecessor to Konami’s Contra, which came a few years later.

However, when Rush’n Attack was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, it became something special. The plot was changed, and instead of rescuing POWs, your character had to destroy the enemy’s secret weapon. There were new weapons, 2-player co-op play, and the arcade’s military-style drumbeat that played throughout the levels was replaced by a full melodic soundtrack. It was a rare instance of a NES port of an arcade game being superior to the arcade original. While it wasn’t the classic that Contra was, Konami’s side-scrolling made its own unique impact on 8-bit gaming. Yeah, the arcade version is available on Xbox Live Arcade, but it just isn’t the same. Hopefully we should see the NES version on the Wii Virtual Console in the near future, provided it isn’t there already.

Bleach, shown Saturday nights on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, is one of the most watched anime shows among adults and teens. If not for its late night time slot and liberal amounts of blood and cleavage, it would be popular with younger viewers as well. Based on Shonen Jump’s manga of the same name, the series centers around Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager who has the ability to see the spirits of the dead. When a mysterious woman visits him, he is attacked by a creature known as a hollow. To defend himself and his family, he takes his strange visitor’s power and uses it to become a Soul Reaper, (or Shinigami as they are known in the Japanese version) who are samurai-like warriors who have special abilities they use to defeat hollows. While the series has nearly reached 200 episodes in Japan, it recently returned to U.S. TV last March after a brief hiatus, and at the time of this writing, it’s only at 77 episodes, so North American fans who don’t watch the online fansubs still have much to look forward to. While it may not be as huge and popular as Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, or Pokemon, Bleach has devoted a fairly large fanbase, and there is a decent variety of merchandise available for fans. There have been action figures, a collectible card game, English translations of the original manga, and most importantly, video games. Thus far, Sega has published two Bleach games on U.S. shores, one of which, Bleach: The Blade of Fate for the Nintendo DS, is this week’s $20 game of the week. As a special bonus, we’ll take a look at the other game, Bleach: Shattered Blade for the Nintendo Wii. Both of these games are fighters, and both vary in degrees of quality. Die hard fans of the series probably already have these two games, but more moderate fans will probably be on the fence about them. So if you want the word on how well these games play, continue forward.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

At a Star Trek event in Las Vegas today, Leonard Nimoy, better known to fans as the legendary Mister Spock, announced the biggest MMO since World Of Warcraft.

The game will be set several generations after the events of the last Star Trek theatrical film, Nemesis. This relieves my fear of the lack of progress after Voyager and Nemesis, Star Trek resorted to a prequel series called Enterprise and the 11th theatrical film will also take place before the original series. The game will start players out on their own ships in the Federation or Klingon Empire, with heavy emphasis on exploration in a vast space setting.

The Associated Press reports character creation will draw heavily from Star Trek’s database of species, but will also allow players to create new races. Any chance I can make Species 8472?

Star Trek Online has no set release date, but the above trailer is said to be in-engine and is supposedly very far along. Still, graphics and gameplay mechanics are secondary in a Massive Multiplayer Online game, which will likely require an extensive beta test and ongoing support. The game is being developed for PC, but developer Cryptic has teased an Xbox 360 or PS3 version may be released.

Star Trek Online details (AP)

Also of note: four new character posters from JJ Abram’s Star Trek are at Trekmovie.com, similar to ones handed out a Comicon.