I can’t remember the first time I played The Outfoxies, but it definitely wasn’t in an arcade. In fact, I’ve never seen a single coin-op version of this game in thirty years. Anyone who says they played it on release is either very lucky or very lying. Emerging at a time when 3D fighters were all the rage, and traditional 2D fighters were about to reach their zenith, The Outfoxies probably seemed at once outdated, outmoded and, well, just too out there.
Tag Archives: Namco
Mr. Driller – High score heaven
I very nearly didn’t write a blog post this week. Real life got in the way and some difficult personal dramas almost broke a 64-week streak of posts, of which I’m quite proud. I’d started the week replaying one of my favourite RPG remakes of all time, but then life got on top of me and I just felt I hadn’t played enough, and couldn’t remember enough, to do it justice. For a brief moment, I considered skipping a week entirely, but instead decided to write about something I know I can confidently talk about without needing several days to replay it. There was one clear and obvious choice…
Legacy Of The Wizard – The family that slays together…
The first Dragon Slayer game to be released in the west, Falcom’s Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family reached US shores in 1989 when Broderbund localised the Famicom port for NES, renaming it Legacy Of The Wizard. It’s largely forgotten now, especially here in Europe where the game was never released. But it does seem to have achieved a cult status in the US where those who did play it have praised it as a hidden gem and an early example of the burgeoning Metroidvania genre.
Phelios – Flight of fancy
Back in the Nineties, long before the age of social media, digital stores and YouTube, there was really only a small handful of ways to discover a new game. There was word of mouth or whatever games your mates had on their shelf. There were games magazines and, very occasionally, a review show on TV. Finally, there were games shops themselves. Nineties game shops were genuine cathedrals of gaming to me, and I would spend hours worshipping at their altar, often literally kneeling as I scoured the shelves for something that looked awesome enough to part with my very limited cash. My shop of choice in the early Nineties was Microfun, in the Ridings shopping centre in Wakefield and this is where I discovered Phelios…
QuickSpot – And now for something completely difference
If you’d like a perfect videogame example of how form dictates content then look no further than the Nintendo DS. A handheld games console with two separate screens, one a touch screen, and a microphone built in to boot, the Nintendo DS was a games console completely unlike anything before it. For many its convention-breaking form represented a sort of Homer’s car of games consoles; a confluence of gimmicks at a time when convention dictated new hardware offer only better graphics than the last. But for others, the dual screen handheld represented untold creative possibilities for new types of games, previously impossible on traditional tech. Thankfully, there were many developers who agreed and as the platform grew in popularity, the DS library exploded with creativity. Big publishers got involved with the sorts of original concepts you might only expect from indie game developers today as those weird new hardware features planted the seeds of innovation.
City Shrouded In Shadow – Godzilla Vs. Disaster Report
As Japanese survival adventure games go, can there be anything better than Irem’s Disaster Report series? How about if you took the exact same gameplay format but instead of escaping a city plagued by floods or earthquakes, the natural disaster was giant monsters?! Now how about if those giant monsters were actually some of the most famous tokusatsu characters from Japanese history? Big names from the likes of Godzilla, Gamera, Ultraman, Evangelion and Patlabor? Surely such a game could only exist in our dreams? That game is real, and actually released relatively recently, in space year 2017!
Games From The Black Hole 
