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.

Now I’m just as excited about playing the newest iterations of Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Guitar Hero, SoulCalibur, and Silent Hill as the next gamer, but if you ask me, now is an awesome time to be a fan of classic gaming. Throughout these past few years, we’ve had several compilation packs of classic titles from companies like Taito and Midway. Nintendo, Sega, SNK, and NEC have been putting much of their systems’ back catalogs on the Wii Virtual Console, while the PSN store and Xbox Live Arcade have had a steady stream of both classic and classic-style games made readily available for download. Just when you think things couldn’t get any better, Konami recently released the Japanese version of Dracula X on U.S. shores for the very first time, and Capcom will be releasing new Mega Man, Street Fighter, and Bionic Commando games throughout the next several months. Then there is this, Contra 4. Out of nowhere, Konami has given gamers a clever throwback to the 16-bit glory days of Contra, while still keeping it relevant today. They’ve managed to bring back everything old school gamers loved about Contra while at the same time reintroducing it to a new generation of gamers.

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Swagshow, a venue not unlike our own here at Powet but limited to YouTube videos, managed to make their way down to E3 and capture some footage of the two new Castlevania games, Order of Ecclesia and Judgement.

Order of Ecclesia already had some footage released that’s been floating around the net, and this video just provides greater coverage of the Glyph system that the game uses, as well as a bit of dialogue between main character Shanoa and her mentor Barlowe. The Glyph system is interesting in that you can assign glyphs to each hand to attack with, using either the same glyph for both or different glyph for each. As has been mentioned before, the action will be combination of styles from previous recent Castlevania games such as Symphony of the Night or Dawn of Sorrow, with a traveling map similar to oldschool classic Simon’s quest.

As for Judgement, we only get to see a small snippet of playtime. Playable characters revealed are Simon Belmont, Maria Renard, and Alucard. Though gameplay seems fluid and the characters seem to move and attack well, the game thus far looks like a clone of Soul Calibur….with zombies. However, I will hold off on my contempt for the game until I get to watch the full thing when it’s released.

Today is the 4th of July, where America celebrates its independence. There are few things that symbolize America more than the defenders of the old west, the cowboy. Okay, there is apple pie, but to my knowledge, there haven’t been many video games made about apple pie. Anyway, in honor of America’s birthday, this week’s $20 GOTW and Lost Classics will take a special look at some classic 8 and 16-bit games taking place in the wild wild west. So saddle on up, and mosey on down to your favorite game shop and seek out these games pardner!
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This fall will be a heavy time for Castlevania fanatics, as it’s been announced by Konami that both of the newest titles of the acclaimed series, “Order of Ecclesia” and “Judgement” will be released sometime later this year.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, reported upon earlier, is the Nintendo DS title following upon the footsteps of previous games such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow in terms of gameplay, as an action-adventure 2D platformer. It takes control of newcomer Shanoa as she searches for the lost Belmont family while battling the minions of Dracula.

Castlevania: Judgement, if you haven’t heard yet, will be a 3D fighting game; a first for the series. (for obvious reasons) Castlevania characters from all over the series continuum will be thrown together in a style leechingly-similar to Soul Calibur to fight one another in a (hopefully) non-canon battle royale. A even more shocking twist is the hiring of Death Note’s Takeshi Obata to do character designs, completely overhauling pre-existing designs mostly coming from series-usual Ayame Kojima.

This fall will surely prove to be an interesting turn of events for Castlevania fans. Many debates have already begun as to the fate of both games as numerous fans, while liking the usual-style Ecclesia is going with, denounce Judgement as straying too far from the Castlevania norm and claim it to be merely Konami’s cash-maker. Come this autumn, we’ll see what’s what when both games are launched to brave public scrutiny.

This right here is mid to late 80’s shoot-em-up action at it’s finest. Like Contra and Heavy Barrel, Jackal was one of those games that didn’t need any big gimmick to be innovative, but at the same time it had its own little quirks which set it apart from other games during that era. Taking control of a jeep (or two if playing two player), you make your way through an unidentified country (which was called Vietnam in the instruction manual from the NES version) and take out any opposition in your way. You mission was to rescue captive POWs and get them to the helicopter. You would them be rewarded with various weapon upgrades, which you use to defeat the enemies. Similar to other Konami games during this period, this game features some neat, even if somewhat outlandish boss designs. You’ll encounter Medusa statue heads that shoot missiles, a fortress gate with turrets, and a command HQ which turns into a giant tank. This is an awesome top down shooter to play, and of course it’s even better if you bring along a friend. Seeing as how Konami is a big supporter of the Wii virtual console, I have no doubt that this will be hitting the VC’s lineup sometime in the future. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t already. For now however, you’ll have to do some hunting for the original cart.

Metal Gear Solid 4 was released earlier this week, so this week’s $20 Game of the week and Lost Classics will spotlight 2 entries from the series. So once you get done with 4, seek them out if you haven’t played through them already! Despite the similarity in names, this is not the Playstation smash hit, but it’s the American release of what is known in Japan as Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel. Ghost Babel exists outside of series canon, and contains a new plot, new characters, and new enemies.
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This week, Metal Gear Solid 4 hits the Playstation 3. As Metal Gear Solid 3 was a tale set in the past, this makes MGS 4 the long awaited follow up to the events of MGS 2, which was released almost 7 years prior! As such, series newcomers will want to check out the franchises past entries. While Metal Gear Solid 2 may have gotten a bad rap for a few key issues, (most notably the complex plot and the fact that you play as someone other than Solid Snake for a majority of the game) Metal Gear Solid 2 is still every bit a classic as any other game in the series. While the original version is still available, players will want to grab this special edition which contains several hours of new content and marks the first and only time that Metal Gear Solid has appeared on a Microsoft console.

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