Category Archives: Retro Weekends

Retro Weekends – Killer Instinct

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Welcome to Fighting February! This month, we’ll be covering four retro fighting games. As they say, what’s love without pain. So sit back, relax, grab a loved one, and promptly break up because you’re being a cheap-ass with the hadoukens. Trust us, it’ll make us feel less lonely :)

The year is 1994. The fighting game craze is in full swing with Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, and many others are duking it out for the most quarters and carts at home. While the more niche enthusiasts of fighting games had a plethora to choose from, the mainstream crowd sided with either Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat. Nintendo, and by extension Rareware, saw this as an opportunity to jump into the fray. With a new console on the horizon and some sick-ass hardware to work with now, Rare was ready to level the playing field and offer a viable third option for players looking for that Killer Instinct.

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Retro Weekends – Mortal Kombat

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Welcome to Fighting February! This month, we’ll be covering four retro fighting games. As they say, what’s love without pain. So sit back, relax, grab a loved one, and promptly break up because you’re being a cheap-ass with the hadoukens. Trust us, it’ll make us feel less lonely :)

Since the beginning, videogames have been a relatively bloodless affair. There were some excursions in shameless debauchery, one major unchecked headshot, and a journey through a pulsating heart. But overall even the most down to earth games saw no blood spilling on the pavement. Even Street Fighter II, a game about beating the living shit outta your opponent, relegated the blood to the losing fighter’s portraits. But then one company thought that maybe that blood should come to the forefront of battle. And before you knew it, everyone’s hands were soaked in digital blood. After the break, Fighting February continues with the original Mortal Kombat.

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Retro Weekends – Street Fighter II

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Welcome to Fighting February! This month, we’ll be covering four retro fighting games. As they say, what’s love without pain. So sit back, relax, grab a loved one, and promptly break up because you’re being a cheap-ass with the hadoukens. Trust us, it’ll make us feel less lonely 🙂

In 2008-09, fighting games became cool again. Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue, King of Fighters, they all made big splashes on the videogame scene. They were there to tell the industry that fighting games were back after nearly a decade. Of Course there were fighting games in that span of time, like Soul Calibur II, Tekken 4, Dead of Alive 4 and Virtua Fighter 5. But it had all fallen into a niche, and only the most devoted of fighting fans were really appreciative of these games. Coming into 2012, this fighting game boom shows no signs of letting up, with Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Street Fighter X Tekken, and Skullgirls keeping that fire going. But before we do, let’s take a moment to look back at the game that started the initial boom in the 90s: Street Fighter II.

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Retro Weekends – Chrono Trigger

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I could start this article by simply saying “Classic” and be done with it, but that would be a disservice to the game. Topping many gamers’ lists of best games of all time, Chrono Trigger has stood the test of time for many generations. This was the game that tapped into the imagination of many gamers back in the 90s. It set the standard that RPGs would follow in years to come. It has been released on many platforms, ensuring that you could play this game on something you have. Let’s travel back in time and talk about Chrono Trigger.

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Retro Weekends – Abadox

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What’s the goriest game you could think of? I’ll give you some time…. Okay, now how about the Super Nintendo/Genesis, can you think of a gory game for that one? Got some? Good. Now how about the NES? Not a lot huh? Well, that’s the point. The NES wasn’t really known for having much gore in the games that released on it. While there were some games that skillfully dodged Nintendo of America’s Judeo-Christian-Puritan-No-Sex-No-Violence Morality code, there were some that made your wonder “How the hell did this make it past the censors?” One of those games was space-shooter Abadox.

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Retro Weekends – Sonic The Hedgehog

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In the 80s, Mario was not only the mascot of Nintendo, he was the mascot of an entire medium. Unlike the Pong Paddles, the triangle in space, and whatever the hell Pac-Man was supposed to be, Mario was just a regular man in some strange adventures. He was a recognizable face, and his games revolutionized the industry. SEGA was looking to cash-in and make a name for themselves with their own mascot. The 8-bit era produced nothing major, but that all changed during the 16-bit era. This weekend, we look back at Sonic’s debut in his self-titled game, Sonic the Hedgehog.

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Retro Weekends – The Super Scope

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Before digital dismembered hands held guns aimed at cacodemons, we held the guns ourselves and aimed them at our screens. Well… fake guns anyway. The Zapper for the NES was a neat little novelty that came with the NES. The novelty did fade though, and Zapper support soon faded away. Games like Operation Wolf and The Adventures of Bayou Billy would have support, but it wasn’t enough to keep the Zapper alive. But with the SNES, Nintendo sought to make a peripheral better than the Zapper. It would be bigger, use an IR sensor in conjunction with cathode rays, and best of all, it was wireless. Ladies and gentlemen, the Super Scope after the jump.

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Retro Weekends – Blasto

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Happy New Year first of all.

Now then, on Christmas Eve morning, we took a look back on the PS1 and my experience getting and owning a PS1. I longed for an N64 for a very long time after playing a lot of it at my cousins’ house. Then come Christmas of 98 I had received a Playstation. You can go to that article to see how I reacted. I briefly mentioned that my first game for it was Blasto. Well, that’s the game we’ll be talking about on this weekend of yet another eve, New Year’s Eve.

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Retro Weekends – The Playstation

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Merry Christmas fellow fishes! Today’s Christmas Eve, and today’s probably a very important day for you. You got gifts to get (slowpoke), people to see, things to prepare in the house, stuff to cook… well you get the idea. So I thought it’d be best to make this weekend’s Retro Weekend extra early and put it up at 7:00AM. I’m sure you got time to spare for this article. Last week I said that we’d come right back here and talk about something that changed my gaming habits. Well, if you look at the header image up there, then you know exactly what I’m going to talk about. Hit the jump to read about my history with the original Playstation. Continue reading →

Retro Weekends – Super Mario Kart

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Next weekend is the weekend of Christmas. That tree of yours is packed with presents, and there’s probably a 3DS in one of those. Good luck to you with that. But today, we’re going back in time again (as we always do with Retro Weekends) to the year 1996. If you read last week’s Retro Weekend on Donkey Kong Country 3, you’ll know that I also received Super Mario Kart alongside it as a Christmas gift as well. Well, this week is Part 2 of our little Holiday Special of Retro Weekends. Hit the jump and join me as we talk about Super Mario Kart. Continue reading →

Retro Weekends – Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble

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Here we are, the final game in the Donkey Kong Country trilogy for the SNES. If you missed out on reading about the other two games, go back and read them here and here. To summarize, both games somehow found ways to avoid me. DKC1 stopped working, and I never owned DKC2. But what of DKC3? Well, this is the only one in the trilogy that I still own on the SNES and still works. I haven’t played it for many years, but trust me when I say that I played it a lot since it was the only one in my possession and working. Join me as we explore one of the last games released on the SNES. Continue reading →

Retro Weekends – Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

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Last week, we covered a game that was one of my first games on the SNES, Donkey Kong Country. It met a sad fate when it stopped working, and I went without the first game for over a decade. Eventually I bought the game on the Wii’s Virtual Console, and all the memories started coming back. So this weekend, we’ll be talking about a rather elusive game for many gamers, including me. Physical copies of this game are somewhat rare and pretty expensive as many gamers that own this game aren’t willing to part ways with it. As the header image suggests, I’m talking about Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest.

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Retro Weekends – Donkey Kong Country

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Picture if you will, two rivals, Nintendo and SEGA, in the middle of a very heated war of consoles. SEGA enjoyed the #1 spot after releasing their Genesis, competing against Nintendo’s NES. They steal not only Nintendo’s thunder, but third parties as well that had enough of Nintendo’s draconian bullshit during the 80s. They shelve Alex Kidd and replace him with the hip, the cool (and sometimes creepy), Sonic The Hedgehog. Nintendo, not willing to bow down, release the Super Nintendo. Now the companies are on even ground: two companies, two 16bit consoles, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Nintendo is pulling ahead and netting good game after good game from both them and third parties. A new format is on the rise: the CD. SEGA would invest money into it and make the SEGA CD add-on, with FMV games being their main push. Nintendo, they still got their cartridges, and still kicking ass. SEGA’s frustrated, as their CD format ain’t cutting it. So, they return to cartridge format and make the 32X, capable of rendering polygonal 3D graphics. Nintendo? They’re still sticking with their regular SNES cartridge. Not only that, they release this behemoth: Donkey Kong Country.

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Retro Weekends – W-Gundam Zero Custom Model Kit

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This past week I spent much of my time playing through Persona 4. It’s been a while since I played it and I last left off at the sauna right before the Kanji fight. Well, cut to yesterday, and now I’m up to the the secret base dungeon. In between that, I took a quest where I had to make a mech model for this guy. It was an ema request, so I I figured “eh, why not. The fox’ll give me a discount.” So, I made the main character build the model, and then the slight nostalgia trip hit me… the seemingly tedious job of building a mech model was actually fun when I had one. And it was the only one I ever had.

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Retro Weekends – Super Soakers

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Editor’s Note: Retro Gaming Weekends has not been discontinued. Instead, it is now being merged into Retro Weekends, which covers anything from toys, cartoons, anime, commercials, live-action shows, and of course games, that I grew up on in the 90s and early 2000s.

Ah the Super Soaker. It was somewhat of a status symbol of your wealth when you were a kid. Of course by wealth I mean how much you begged and pleaded with your parents to lose money on getting a Super Soaker. While your typical discount store had those cheap little water guns that shot streams resembling piss, no one messed with you the moment you came out with this beast of a water gun. Of course, once you had one, the other kids wanted one too and eventually got one. And then the real war began as you’d try to last as long as you could without having to reload. No one really knew when exactly you won a watergun fight, but I’m assuming whoever got the heavier clothes lost. Regardless, I enjoyed a short run of having not one, but two Super Soakers! After the break, my story and why I stopped playing with Super Soakers. Continue reading →