While it’s incredibly cheesy by today’s standards, Kingpin: Life of Crime blew the doors open for mature content in games. While Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil were quite graphic, Kingpin’s content went way beyond simply ripping out spines and blowing apart zombie brains. The sex, profanity, and drugs went a long way towards proving that video games weren’t just for kids anymore. What made this game even more daring was that it had been released just after the Columbine massacre, immediately attracting a lot of controversy. The game’s developer Xatrix went on the defensive, including a warning that the game wasn’t for kids as well as a low-violence install option. Thankfully, beneath the R-rated content, there is a very good game that manages to retain some of its shine even today. While it can most certainly be considered a spiritual successor to the modern Grand Theft Auto games, it also contains several elements from a few other genres, making this difficult to pigeonhole into one category.

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This past week was my birthday. To celebrate, I have a double dose of my usual columns this week. This first part is an appendix to last week’s Street Fighter special, featuring 3 Capcom fighting games while the second part, due later this week, will deal with some RPGs. Once again, it’s my [belated] birthday, yet you get the gift. Click onward!
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Welcome back to part 2 of our Street Fighter special. In the last part, we looked over some of the franchise’s more infamous parts. In this one, we look at Street Fighter EX, which was a highly controversial entry in the series, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, and as an added bonus, we’ll take a look at a little known Dreamcast/Arcade title featuring characters from the franchise.
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This week sees the release of the highly anticipated Street Fighter 4. To celebrate, Powet presents a special 2-part $20 Game of the Week/Lost Classics/Maximum Letdown Special on some of the highs and the lows of the franchise. This is part one, in which we will feature the original Street Fighter (as an example of why you can’t go home again) and the two games based on a certain movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme which just so happens to have a name and cast of characters similar to Street Fighter. This weekend we’ll take a look at Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix along with one of the more under appreciated bright spots of the franchise.
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Man, Square sure diversified after leaving Nintendo….oh wait, I said that last week didn’t I? Anyway, this fighting game (and collaboration with Namco and Dreamfactory) was as far away from the company’s RPG roots as it gets. It was also a departure from other fighting games around the time as well. Characters are allowed full 3-d movement, and don’t even have to face each other, not unlike Capcom’s Power Stone. The arenas contained interactive elements such as destructible crates that can be used as weapons. However the arenas are a bit on the small side, and the camera doesn’t track as well as it should sometimes. Even so, it’s still a fresh and fast-paced approach to the fighting game genre. The story (as with a good majority of other fighters) is that some mysterious conglomerate is holding a fighting tournament, and fighters from all around the world arrive to compete. Okay, so the story isn’t that original, but the characters are. On the surface, they look like your usual Tekken/Virtua Fighter archetypes, but their physical features and backstories make them something else. For instance, Ken ‘Godhand’ Mishima may look like your average fighting game main character, but he was a former assassin whose arm was replaced with a canon. Lee Shuwen may look like your typical old man kung-fu master, but he is suffering from a reverse aging disease. Not only do you get to play as these guys, several characters from a little known game called Final Fantasy 7 are also among the cast! Why would you want to play as any of the original yahoos, when you can play as Sephiroth?

Beside the main game, there are several minigames that can be played as well. There is a racing game and a board game, but the one you will be spending the most time with is the dungeon mode. Here, you take control of an archelogist as they explore a seemingly endless dungeon. Not unlike Diablo 2, you go through the dungeon building stats and gaining items and weapons to help you on your journey. The dungeons are even randomly generated, making the experience different each time.

Ehrgeiz may not have been be Street Fighter, but it introduced several unique concepts that were further refined in other games. The original disc has gone out of print, and was never re-released as part of SOny’s ‘Greatest Hits’ line. Thankfully, Japanese PS3 owners can purchase it at the PSN store, so hopefully this game will be available in the US PSN store as well. Gamers deserve a second chance to experience this classic, if for no other reason than the fact that gamers can control Sephiroth and his planet-destroying awesomeness.

When it was first released, Blood Omen was like no other game before it. You didn’t play as your typical pretty boy good guy, you played as a vampire hell bent on seeking revenge. You don’t care about saving the world, you only want to cure yourself of this fate, and you use any means necessary to extract this revenge. You sucked blood from villagers to restore your health, changed form to destroy your enemies, and spread terror across the land. It was such a shame that subsequent entries in the series didn’t do much justice to Silicon Knights’ classic, otherwise the Legacy of Kain series could have stood alongside franchises such as Zelda and Castlevania. As it is, this PS1 title stands alone in the series as one of the system’s classic titles.
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It’s a New Year, and one that looks exciting for geeks everywhere. To celebrate (and to make up for my tardiness), I’ve got a three-piece of new game related content. Along with the $20 GOTW and Lost Classics, we have the debut of our new section, Maximum Letdown. What is Maximum Letdown? Well you remember all the gaming classics from your youth? You know, the beloved Castlevanias, Contras, Zeldas, Street Fighter 2 Turbos, and the Final Fantasies that we love to reminisce about. Of course, there are other games from that era that we don’t like to talk about so much. Remember the CD-I Mario and Zelda games? How about the Adventures of Master Chu and Drunkard Hu (WHAT!?!?)? Do you remember when the Grand Theft Auto games had lousy play control? Or better yet, Wisdom Tree’s bible games? For every Gears of War, Halo, and Castlevania released, there are a thousand more Pixar/Disney/Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network shovelware carts destined for the bargain bin, if the even make it that far. Yeah, Maximum Letdown is gonna remind you of the darkside of gaming. We’re gonna dredge up some seriously bad memories. These are the games that either didn’t deliver on their promises, had that one fatal flaw that ruined it for gamers, didn’t do its license or predecessors proper justice, or was just plain awful. This won’t be done as frequently as a Lost Classics or $20 GOTW, but we’ll have a new one up at least twice a month. Speaking of Lost Classics and $20 GOTW, the former deals with a fighting game released at the dawn of the 32-bit era, and the latter is a game based on a fighting game. So without further ado, read on after the jump.

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Before Capcom vs SNK, there was, well, SNK vs SNK. While the Neo Geo had several good shooters and platformers, it would be fighting games which would really put SNK and the Neo Geo on the map. Games such as Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Samurai Showdown would show that SNK was every bit as equal to Capcom in the fighting game arena. Even third party developers such as ADV and Data East made games for the Neo Geo. In 1994, after the several Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting games, SNK decided change the genre and do something completely new. They created a fighting game in which fighters were placed into 3-man teams, something which was unheard of at the time. Even more amazing, they teamed up characters from their back catalog. Fatal Fury fighters mixed it up with Art of Fighting characters. Yeah, people flipped when they fought Ryo Sazaki in Fatal Fury Special, and it was cool to see Geese Howard as the boss of Art of Fighting 2, but now the crossover appeal had been taken to the next level. It wasn’t just SNK FIGHTERS who joined in the fun. Characters from Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier also threw down with Terry Bogard and crew. There were also several new characters who joined as well. In fact, Kyo Kusanagi, one of the new blood, would rise to become KOF’s main hero. The series itself would become one of the Neo Geo’s (as well as the genre’s) most prolific titles. Subsequent entries were released on an almost-yearly basis, and the newest entry in the series is being developed even now. To tide us over until then, SNK has released this collection of the first 5 games in the series. This disc is a must-own for fans of the series, fans of SNK, or fans of 2-d fighters period.
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