Sure, you can buy GameSpite Quarterly 1 with real cash money now, but I get it: this is the Internet. We’re all cheapskates who think we deserve access to the fruits of others’ labor for no money. Who am I to fight a generation’s sense of entitlement? And so the online publication of the issue marches on at the exciting new rate of four articles per week. It’s funny to think I was worried that moving to print would cause the online content to slow down; turns out we have twice as much content to post as in previous issues.
A Tiny Star is Born: Game Boy Arrives
The magazine, you’ll notice from the index, is arranged chronologically and divided into chapters that cover specific (if rather loosely-defined) eras of the Game Boy’s life. Each chapter has an intro piece that sets the context for the subsequent game reviews. It’s all very orderly! It’s also slightly redundant, but what can ya do. This segment covers 1989-1990: the Game Boy’s birth.
Tetris
Tetris’s life is so symbiotically bonded to the Game Boy’s that it seems almost unnecessary to cover the topic. But then we’d have this weird gap in the magazine that would make people wonder how we could have overlooked something so basic. Fortunately, Calories Man managed to take a new and different angle on this most well-worn of topics. An impressive feat.
Super Mario Land
We talked about Super Mario Land on Retronauts a few weeks ago, and the general consensus is that the game has become a victim of revisionist groupthink. If you were a gamer in 1989, you were pretty damn pumped about the prospect of Mario on the go — and as Kat explains, it’s only through the cynical lens of hindsight that this adventure disappoints.
The Castlevania Adventure
The Castlevania Adventure, on the other hand… that one kinda sucked even back then. Mr. Nomali has registered his protest at my parsing of the name (it’s more properly “Castlevania: The Adventure”), but in my book referring to it by its proper name is endorsing it with a degree of validation that it doesn’t deserve.
I want to read these, but I would rather read the book when I get my grubby little mits on it. Damn you Game Boy Nostalgia.
BTW I soo love that old school Game Boy Boxart, more video games need Tronesque looking hands hold the system on the box, would do wonders for sales.
Super Mario Land also has a killer soundtrack by Hirokazu Tanaka. I still love jamming the Chai Kingdom track, with its hilarious mock “music of the Orient.”
Man, Game Boy screenshots are kind of eyesores at 3x size. But CV: The A is an irredeemably ugly game anyway, so it’s all right in my case. >B]
I love that I won’t even read my own article because I prefer it in print form.
Sorry for posting this here, but I don’t know where else I can:
I recently tried to sign up for the forum here, got the email, and submitted my confirmation code. However, days later, I still can’t sign in (well, I can, but then I’m not even allowed to view anything, let alone post).
I tried e-mailing webmaster@gamespite.net, as the confirmation message advised, but my friendly neighborhood mailer-daemon informed me that it couldn’t deliver messages to that address. Hence, this seems to be the only outlet to ask for help, short of e-mailing Parish directly (should I do that?)
Any advice or help? If so, thanks.
C.Mate, I see what you did there.
Since somebody beat me to the praise-singing for Hip Tanaka’s soundtrack, I’ll just say that, having never read what anybody had to say about Super Mario Land before now, I didn’t even know anybody thought it was a bad game. I liked it, and I liked the second one… and I inexplicably never got any of the Wario Land games, and I have no idea why.