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.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Even though it’s a bit immoral, I just love the drug dealing mechanic in GTA Chinatown Wars. It’s quite satisfying trying to make a dollar out of 15 cent by slanging dope. Now what if someone were to take that mechanic, make an entire game based around it, set it in space, make it into an FPS, and make it 200 percent more retarded? Well the end result would most likely be Space Trader – Merchant Marine, which is likely a remake of the old Palm Pilot OS game. I got this game as part of the Meridian 4 game collection that was only $24 during a Steam special (this special also included Shadowgrounds, Chains, and Larva Mortus). Although its economy-based gameplay premise shows promise, it’s bought down by too many flawed mechanics.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Sega’s Cyborg Justice for the Sega Genesis has in interesting premise: You (and a friend is playing co-op) can build a customizable cyborgs and pit him against an onslaught of enemy cyborgs. However, an interesting premise alone won’t help your game, especially if the gameplay is as dull, frustrating, and repetitive as it is in cyborg justice. You play as a human who has been transformed into a cyborg against their will. Now you must escape the cyborg’s planet, battling waves of identical looking cyborgs on the way using generic combat moves.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Maximum Letdown: Battle Arena Toshinden 3 (PS1)
In the early days of the Playstation, Battle Arena Toshinden was all the rage. It provided some excellent 3D fighting action, showcased what the system was capable of, and it provided some eye candy in the form of the lovely Sofia. However, that was then. By 1998, the franchise had fast become a relic of days gone by (and this despite its sequel being published in the arcades by Capcom no less). As franchises such as Virtua Fighter and Tekken were evolving the genre into something greater, Toshinden was consistently failing to offer fighting game fans anything different, and as Tekken was soaring to new heights, Toshinden would slowly fade off into the darkness by the new millennium, and its developers decided to kill it off gracefully with this supposedly last entry (of course there was a Battle Arena Toshinden 4, but it was never released in America, and at that point, no one would care about it anyway).
[Read the rest of this entry…]

After Midway struck gold with Mortal Kombat, they tried again, again, and again to repeat its success in the fighting game arena, but failed miserably. While Capcom was able to follow up the wildly successful Street Fighter 2 with Darkstalkers and the Marvel fighting games, SNK successfully presented Art of Fighting (along with King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, and so many others) as Fatal Fury’s successor, and Namco followed up Tekken with Soul Blade, Midway churned out failures such as Bio Freaks and Mace: The Dark Age. They had some potential though, as Bio Freaks had an dismemberment game mechanic and Mace could have been Soul Edge’s evil twin. However, Midway’s most notable attempt (and by this I mean biggest failure) was War Gods. Although it had some promise, it was dragged down by horrid controls, lousy character design, and a frustratingly cheap artificial intelligence.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

*sigh*

Think about it, Asian women in bikinis killing scores of zombies.

This should have been an early contender for game of the year.

(Okay maybe not exactly, but it should at least have been a fun way to pass the time until Resident Evil 5 had been released)

So what happened?

I don’t know, but click after the jump and I’ll do my best to help find an answer.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

In move determined to make him unpopular with readers of this site, Wisconson State Senator Jon Erpenbach is proposing a tax on videogames.

His goal is sound: Keep 17 year old delinquents in the Juvenile system instead of the harsher adult system, but using taxes on videogames may be the wrong way to go about it.

His reasoning:

“The idea being that this is kind of a kids-kids thing, in other words, if we’re going to do this for kids maybe this would be a good way to go about it. And if it’s not the best way, I’m open to any other way,”

This would put the burden on Wisconsin gamers (the vast majority over the age of 18) to fund the court system, and may put a stigma on videogames when they’re taxed at a higher rate. Wisconsin gamers are already talking about ordering games online where they won’t pay the tax

From Channel 3000: Watch The Report

Captain Planet’s got nothing on Sony.

In a turn of planetary charity, Sony has announced that they are setting up a program that would allow people to turn in their old broken or unwanted Playstation consoles in for recycling. The Sony “Take Back Recycling Program” will launch September 15th, and will accept any of it’s own consoles for free, and any other consumer electronics for a fee. Yes, if you don’t have a Sony product, you must pay to help conserve resources with your puny Xbox’s or Gamecubes. Imagine that.

The company has partnered with 75 Waste Management (WM) Recycle America eCycling centers across the country, and you can mail your console in if you don’t live near to one. The number of centers to accept the consoles will hope to increase within a year, Sony predicts.

“We believe it is Sony’s responsibility to provide customers with end-of-life solutions for all the products we manufacture,” said Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics.

What kind of incentive do you get for being so environment-conscious? Nothing. You get the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping to save the planet. Somehow, I can’t see this exactly being a great way of motivating people, when people have enough trouble keeping from throwing their beer and soda cans out their car windows. Though I must admit, it would be pretty humorous to see if people littered the sides of highways with broken and useless Sony consoles in the same fashion.