Zac and Zero return for the first co-op Keep Playing review. They became friends playing Halo 2 five years ago, will Halo 3 ODST continue the tradition?
Related Videos: Keep Playing Review: Halo Wars, Halo 3 Leftovers!

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This past weekend I featured a big article on the Nintendo Entertainment System’s most influential games. This didn’t make the list, but it was still an excellent sports title from Nintendo’s early days. Back then, beating Mike Tyson was a rite of passage for any hardcore gamer. Of course, en route to face him, you also went face to face with several fictional boxers, each of them becoming memorable in their own right. Who could for get King Hippo, Glass Joe, or Don Flamenco? Sequels to this game later appeared on the Super Nintendo and most recently the Wii, but this NES classic is the most well known iteration of Punch Out.
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The game play and visuals are too close to be coincidental, but then the music totally seals the deal: From Software’s latest is an homage of the highest order to the Legend of Zelda.
Some lesser blogs have fingered this PSN exclusive as a knock-off, but then it has such a distinct twist, I don’t think it could be qualified as such. Also its too deliberate, it would be like saying Weird Al knocks off Michael Jackson.

If anything its knocking off Super Paper Mario for taking the classic 2D gameplay into a bizarre interpretation of the 3rd dimension!

It launches November 5th on PS3 in Japan, hopefully a global release won’t be far behind.
[3D-Heroes.net]

Gotta love the 8-bit era of gaming. Playing the old NES brings back so many classic memories. Remember using the drift technique in Rally King to make it through to the end of the race? Or how about seeing if you could make it to level 64 in Cosmic Gate? Or how about when you finally defeated that mega-tough guardian in Guadia Quest after some serious level grinding? What’s that? You don’t remember any of those games? Good. There is a reason for that (besides me calling you a liar if you said yes). Those games, along with 5 others, are retro-style games created for this cart. While they have 8-bit NES looks, rest assured, they are as current as Gears of War or Halo.
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What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? Is that why the Japanese game industry has been slipping lately? Even prominent Japanese creators are seeing the writing on the wall, saying that they must innovate, “or die”. As if to prove their point, we talk about a mess of games we’ve been playing that were not made in the land of the rising sun.

Audio Netcast Details
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Direct Link: Powetcast Episode 20: Be an Earthling First

(Name your dream team comic merger! AT&T still doesn’t own a company. How about Dark Horse? Leave your comments below!)

Show notes after the jump!

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During the early 80s, the video game market was in danger of dying off before it could take off. Too many manufacturers were releasing too many consoles no one cared for, and developers were making too many games that were mediocre at best. This would lead to a diminished demand for them in the consumer market as well. If that wasn’t enough, the home computer market was slowly beginning to emerge, as PCs were becoming cheaper and more easily accessible to consumers. It would be a fool’s errand for a company to attempt to reenter the market, yet Japanese developer Nintendo would jump in the market head first.
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Now Halo is hardly a game that one would consider a lost classic, but given the franchise’s popularity, and since Halo ODST hit stores this past week, now is a good time to take a look at this classic, if for no other reason than to see how far the series has come in the 8 years since Halo sold many an Xbox so long ago. You play as the Master Chief, humanity’s last and best hope against a collective of alien races known as the Covenant. Aided by your fellow crew members and a holographic artificial intelligence known as Cortanta, you blast your way through many covenant soldiers in an attempt to discover the secrets of the artificial planet/space station known as Halo.
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YouTube Version

Video Netcast Version
Subscribe to Famicom Dojo on iTunes
Direct Link: Famicom Denshimail – Rare Games (2009/09/28)

This week we talk about the rarest thing we’ve come across — the FMC Disk Checker!

Show notes:
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