I can’t quite remember which Metal Gear game I played first. I remember a mate introducing me to the US version of Metal Gear Solid, a few months before I excitedly picked up the PAL release, and around the same time I remember snagging an original NES Metal Gear cartridge from the second hand market in Wakefield for just a fiver… Which seems like an insane bargain nearly 30 years later. What can I tell you? The Nineties were amazing.
Tag Archives: Nintendo Switch
R-Type Tactics – Charge n blast
Sometimes all a game needs is one good game mechanic; one thing that adds an original twist that can elevate an otherwise average game into something more engaging. R-Type Tactics has that one thing. It arguably has two. Both of them, of course, inherited from the classic 1987 shoot-‘em-up from which it originates.
Demonschool – Stylish strategy
I’ve been looking forward to Demonschool for as long as I’ve known about it. As a creation of Necrosoft Games, run by veteran games journalist and Insert Credit podcaster, Brandon Sheffield, it comes from a group of people who seem to have very similar taste in games to me. What’s more, it’s a tactics RPG, my favourite genre. I knew from the moment I saw it that this would be a day one purchase for me. What I didn’t anticipate is that my background as a tactics RPG enjoyer would, in this case, not do me any favours.
Super Mario 64 – 120 stars of destiny
A few weeks ago, my four-year-old daughter was playing around with the My Mario app on Nintendo Switch. It’s a cute little free app that’s part of a range of toys and experiences designed to get kids into Mario, and I think it’s worked. My daughter somehow seems obsessed, with very little influence from me, and is almost as familiar with him as she is Mickey Mouse. She has a Mario doll that she enthusiastically chose from hundreds of options at Smyths Toys and is eagerly looking forward to seeing the The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is days away from release as I write this.
Dragon Quest – Going solo
Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post about the marvelous Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake and found myself wondering what it would be like to move on to the forthcoming Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, knowing that the experience it offered would be significantly more primitive.
Brandish – Renewed, renowned, removed
As readers of this blog will know, I’m a big fan of the EGGCONSOLE service on Nintendo Switch, which presents emulated versions of classic Japanese computer games at an affordable price with the monkey’s paw catch that they are not translated into English. The service has been going for a while now, mostly covering games released for PC-88 and MSX, and I’ve cheerfully covered both the EGGCONSOLE releases of the original Ys and Popful Mail here on the blog.
Dragon Quest III – Remade in Japan
We’ve all heard how important the original Famicom release of Dragon Quest III is to the gaming population of Japan. One of the biggest selling games of its era, it was so popular that publisher Enix switched the release day for all future entries to a Saturday in order to prevent kids and adults from bunking off school/work. The game is beloved by generations of gamers and regularly appears in Japanese “best game of all time” lists.
Deathsmiles II – Homing for the holidays
Just the other day I was listening to a mailbag episode of the fantastic videogames interview podcast, My Perfect Console, in which a listener asked host, Simon Parkin, what his favourite Christmas game was. “What a pointless question,” I rather arrogantly thought to myself, “surely there’s only one viable answer to that question.” Well, it turns out I was dead wrong!
Final Fantasy Adventure – Mana in miniature
It’s that time of year again, when I choose a game to play while on holiday by the pool. This year, I was especially excited because my week away coincided with the release of The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom. But, for another year running, the sun thwarted my plans again, rendering the Nintendo Switch screen a little too dark to see. Last year I remedied the solar rays with the equally bright and summery Legend Of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, which turned out to be the perfect holiday game. This year, I opted for something distinctly less colourful.
Shadow Of The Ninja – Reborn, remade, really special
Tengo Project, one of the in-house teams at long-running Japanese studio Natsume, is a name I’d never heard until relatively recently. But it turns out I’ve played and loved pretty much every game they’ve ever made. Their first major work under this name was the little known but rather excellent Omega Five, an Xbox Live Arcade shoot-‘em-up made for Hudson in 2008. But more recently they’ve produced a string of excellent remakes, of which Shadow Of The Ninja – Reborn is the latest. Before this there was Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, The Ninja Saviors: Return Of The Warriors and Wild Guns Reloaded…
Games From The Black Hole 
