PixlBit

The road to hell is paved with beautiful 2D sprites.

As someone who cut his teeth on Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog, I have a fondness for the 8- and 16-bit sprite art classic style, but I also want to see games that evolve the 2D platformer and bring it into the 21^st century. I often ask myself how things would be if the games industry never moved on to polygons but instead kept refining their sprites for 25 years. What would that game look like? Thanks to Arkedo and their new game Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit I have my answer, and that answer would be “pretty damn sweet.”

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Classic games come boop-boop-booping their way onto DSiWare.

If you have fond memories of lazy Saturdays taking turns with a friend’s Game & Watch, the possibilities for recreating those experiences have been pretty sparse in the last decade. Today, the primary way to get your hands on LCD-style games is through Nintendo’s own Game & Watch collections for the DS and, strangely, in this summer’s Deadlight on XBLA. Outside of those cases, though, the LCD game is essentially dead.  Or so it seemed, until Retro Pocket swooped onto DSiWare and packed several Saturday afternoons’ worth of LCD-style games into a package that will have some peering over the top of their sunglasses to take in something so rad.

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It's weird and unique, but is it fun?

Due to its rarity, Tomba has become highly sought after for fans and collectors alike. The title, created by the now defunct Whoopee Camp, was the brain child of Ghosts'n Goblins creator/Mega Man producer Tokuro Fujiwara. While the multi-plane sidescroller has Fujiwara's signature, it doesn't quite capture the magic of his prior works, especially 15 years after its release.

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