With the recent surfacing of a prototype Play Station for the SNES, Chris I re-imagines video game history if it were to release.
It's no secret that Sony originally intended to produce a CD-ROM attachment called the Play Station for the Super Nintendo console. Somewhere along the line the deal went sour and what was originally intended for the CD-ROM drive became the Sony PlayStation.
We continue our journey with the "Golden Age" of Final Fantasy
Welcome to the second part of our exhaustive look at the history of Final Fantasy! In the first edition, we looked at the birth of a role playing series that would go on to capture the hearts and minds of millions of gamers worldwide and the man behind that idea-Hironobu Sakaguchi. This time we move into the 16 bit era, a time when the Final Fantasy franchise truly took its place on the world stage of RPGs. So please join us as we delve into the Super Famicom Years.
Mario’s 16-bit debut serves as an introduction to Nintendo’s most legendary console and fleeting farewell to 2-D Mario platforming. And Yoshi.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 90s. In this era we saw many things; we saw the true start of the (in)famous 16-bit console wars, the slow decline of arcades, the invention of CD-ROM media and the start of a tradition with mainline Mario titles. Thought it was nice the NES had three great Mario games? You are not going to see that again for a very long time. Make that nineteen years to be exact. Take a good long look over this fourth Mario Mania entry, because the 2-D Mario platforming ship is sailing and it feels like a bittersweet moment.
Yuzo Koshiro, where are you?
The calendar says it's Friday and you know what that means. That’s right; it’s time for another fantastic installment of Missing in Action!
Wait...Blizzard made games besides WoW, Diablo, and StarCraft?
When talking about Blizzard Entertainment, it’s almost impossible to imagine the company before the creation of their core pillars of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. It’s even more difficult to think of the company making games for home consoles, but in the early 90s both of these unimaginable things were true. Under the original company name of Silicon & Synapse, the house that would be Blizzard produced The Lost Vikings—a beloved side-scrolling puzzle game that fell by the wayside for juggernauts like Warcraft. We have some love for those quirky Vikings around here, so it was high time for them to get their very own MIA.
The finale of the NES trilogy is truly a classic to behold.
The year was 1990. It is about a year before the Super Nintendo makes its debut, but the NES is enjoying brisk sales of both hardware and games. The previous year Nintendo released its first handheld system, the Game Boy, and unleashed the addiction known as Tetris. This was, however, in North America. As I eluded to in Mario Mania #2, a Famicom player often had a different, exclusive set of hardware to play with than his counterpart in North America. The Japan-only accessory, the Famicom Disk System, was one of them.
Before there was Star Fox 64, Fox and company went on a second quest to save Corneria... but chances are, you didn't get to play it.
Shigeru Miyamoto has become quite well known for his outstanding games and their absolutely unique designs. He has led countless projects and played a major role in the runaway success of Nintendo since the introduction of the NES. However, he's also the reason Star Fox 2, a fully completed game, has never seen the light of day.
As many of you are likely aware, this past August marked the 20th anniversary of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Despite this, no one else here wrote an article on it, and I feel this website needs at least one article about this monumental console of gaming history. However, rather than list off what are I feel are the best or most influential games, I'm instead going to talk about the aspect of the system which left the biggest impression on me: the symphonic melodies produced by its seemingly meager 16-bit MIDI.
Searching for the galaxy's grooviest hero.
I don’t know about you all, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been so glad that it’s Friday. It’s been a long week, I must admit, but now that we’re at the end of it I get to spend some time writing my favorite bi-weekly column. That’s right kiddies; it’s time for another exciting installment of Missing in Action!
Matt takes an in-depth look at each Mario game.
You don’t have to tell me that I am a year late. I already know that. Mario’s 25th Anniversary has already come and gone, and Nintendo’s other big franchise is celebrating its 25th this year: namely, the Legend of Zelda. Yet you already know that by now, so you are probably asking this question right now: “Matt, what the hell? Why are you doing a Mario retrospective when you could be writing about Zelda?”
