Well, maybe not a Christmas miracle per se. It’s nowhere near Christmas, for one, and the new content that has appeared on the site today is not actually a miracle but rather has been born of genuine hard work. Eh, as hard as playing a video game and writing about it is, I guess. That’s ultimately a function of the quality of the games in question, and apparently today’s subjects are not too bad. So not even hard work, then.
First, young BobServo takes us on a dazzling trip into the world of Radia Senki — aka Record of the Radia War — an obscure Famicom RPG which despite the title has nothing whatsoever to do with either Record of the Lodoss War or Radiata Story. Tricky language, that Japanese.
And wumpwoast returns with yet another article about an 8-bit Mega Man game. In this case, it’s Dr. Wily’s Revenge for Game Boy. Inexplicably, revenge is a dish best served cold, yet wumpwoast’s write-up is full of warmth. Apparently he didn’t get the memo.
Tomorrow: we press R1 to stare at Eva’s chest at inappropriate moments.
Great review BobServo. You’ve officially convinced me to emulate something that doesn’t use the Konami code.
These huge retro pixel game pictures are eye sores.
Honesty! Honestly!
I totally agree. We should always use the high-quality game packaging instead, because that is fine art.
Some scanlines will spruce that right up! Just kidding. I enjoy how the game artists where able to pack so much detail into 16 or 32 square pixel using only 3 colors. Try it in paint sometime (zoom in) it’s hard! If you look at the Tecmo graphic, you can make out that the guy is wearing a headband and sports a huge forelock.
The compositiion of the Megaman graphic looks like it took some work. I alway thought the Konami/Capcom Gameboy ports were throwaway cash-ins, but now I need to check this out. I was worried that the decreased viewing area would hurt visability, and compromise level design.
Looking at the pictures in the Mega Man article gave me a warm nostalgic feeling. Dr Wily’s Revenge was my introduction to Mega Man. The GB games get a lot of shit from the fanbase about being downgraded from the NES games but, y’know, not all of us owned a NES. Now I want to go dig around in the other room and see if I still have the cart.
It really was bastard hard though. I never figured what weapon you were supposed to use on the final boss.
Yes, I confess that perhaps I have been too harsh on the GB games. I played them back in the day and found them underwhelming, but perhaps I was mistaken!
Or not, I dunno.
wumpwoast is on a woll!!! Keep up the good work. :)
This game was my first Mega Man, too, and when I got to actually play the NES versions I was disappointed and confused. Enker might just be my favorite boss in the whole series, and the only thing that could have improved this piece is a ten-page hagiography of Enker and his exploits.