Old School Game of the Week: Turtles In Time

One game, two different and equally great ways to play. Turtles In Time was the sequel to Konami's killer 4-Player arcade button masher Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT was so hot then, and this was without a doubt the best game to come out of that craze. Even a novice game player could walk up to the machine and figure out what to do. Your joystick moved you around in 8 directions, and you had a jump and an attack button. Press them together and each Turtle would do some kind of special attack like a spinning slash or kick. This upgrade of the older TMNT game engine also let you do a running dash but pressing forward twice where you could then ram into an enemy or do some kind of forward flip over them. You could also now throw enemies AT the screen for a cheap early 3D mode-7 effect. Enemies included dozens of Foot soldier variations, mousers, dinosaurs, stone warriors, and more goddamn mutants. With and enough skills in jump kicks and nunchucks (or an afternoon to kill and a roll of quarters), you were sure to see the ending. But not all of us were blessed with the ability to roll into the arcade and beat the game in one sitting, so Konami did the cool thing and gave us a near perfect port for the new Super NES system. I call it near perfect because it didn't feature 4-Player support... but they did toss in several new levels and bosses, which more than made up for it. This F.A.Q. excellently documents the changes. I admit to being kinda mad that Cement Man and Shredder were ommited completely, even if replace by better bosses. Why couldn't there be a Shedder fight before Super Shredder? Oh well. At least we got Bebop and Rocksteady. Super NES carts weren't exactly cheap (I remember dropping at least $60 in x-mas money for Turtles In Time), but the replay value was great for a pick-up-and-play-as-a-ninja-turtle game. There were several levels of difficulty, some better control options (like mapping the special attack to a seperate button), a kinda worthless VS game, and a Time trial mode where you had a short time to kill as many Foot Soldiers as possible. This is not one of the great classics that stand the test of time like a Mario or Sonic game. It doesn't even compare to other stuff Konami was releasing at the time like Super Castlevania. But if you want to play a game that perfectly encapsulated where pop-culture and gaming were in 1991, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time is a shining example.

OMG! Allard confirms Halo 4

Halo 3 speculation is old news now! In the IGN interviewXbox boss-man J Allard said

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"games are the biggest content you'll ever download. But we talk about, 'Will I buy Halo 4 online exclusively online?' I don't know. I don't think about it that way. I think about the marketplace as a place to have a real friction-free relationship with a gamer "

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So there you go, Halo 4 will come out when you can download it. Or maybe not. But it will come out. After Halo 3. And hopefully it will fix all the broken multiplayer maps and cheating from Halo 3. I hate having my pelican shot down in the middle of a flag raid on Sidewinder by some jack ass with infinite fuel rod cannon ammo.

Revolution controller mockup on Half-Life 2

This little genius took a One handed PS1 Controller and an Gyration mouse and plugged them into his PC to see how Nintendo's Revolution controller might work. Seeing as Nintendo hasn't shown off any actual games yet, this mock-up is the closest thing we have to seeing in-game play. Posted to the IGN Boards, theres photos of the hardware he used and a short video. Well done, Tsietisin. This of course confirms my earlier assertion that this will be the best controller for shooting games since the Zapper.

Spartan-458

10/22/05 Update! New hi-res screens available! Also, this is fast becoming the most popular post in the blog, so here is other posts about Halo and don't forget to check out the forum and the rest of the blog! Original 10/13/05 post: Last week we heard DOA4 would have a Halo character. It was quickly confirmed it wouldn't be Chief. While I was hoping for the villanous Tartarus or even a Flood mutation, we got something else entirely... Spartan-458 While the Halo story dictates that Master Chief is the last survivor of the Spartan program, 458 has shown up alive and well and is (gasp!) a woman. Can't wait to see this in action, and read Bungie's plot explaination as to how a dead solider from the future shows up in this game (hey, they promised to not break continuity!)

Name Your Own Price on Gamecube!

Word is coming in from the east that Nintendo is cutting Gamecube price shackles to whatever retailers want. No word yet if this deal will go anywhere else, but without a killer title this christmas, it might be the only thing to keep the console selling. This was on digg several days ago, but mentioning it to friends not many had heard of it. and yes, i spent a lot of time on that picture.

Metroid Prime Pinball: Hands on

Metroid is one of the few Nintendo franchises that has remained pure. With the exception of Samus Aran's appearance in Smash Brothers, Metroid has stayed out of racing, partying, extreme sports, dancing, and the other assorted oddball activities the Mario crew finds themselves in. Metroid has also never had a bad game, putting it far ahead of Star Fox (which now stands at 2 good games and 2 terrible ones) and even Zelda (I'm counting those CD-i turds.) So why now with the Metroid universe being glorified with the astounding Zero Mission remake of the first game and the superb play of Prime... why now do we see a Pinball game? Mario Pinball Land is one of the worst Nintendo games ever released. But while the associated is blasphemous, the game itself is actually pretty good as as faithful as can be expected. We could've done a whole lot worse. I played the Tallon IV overworld table, with the DS' L/R buttons working the triggers. Enemies from Metroid Prime show up here and there, since Samus is ball mode, she'll need to use the B button to drop bombs to take out some of them. At certain points you'll lock into position just above the bumpers and stand up and Samus will rapid fire at an onslaught of approaching enemies. This also is controlled very simply by using the d-pad or just the L/R buttons to aim left and right to blast them as the get close. Just from the very short playtest, I could tell this is going to be a very fun game. Its not a new 2D adventure (as the oft-rumoured unseen DS title Metroid Dread is), and its not Hunters, which is aging very quickly. Even though it sticks out like a sore thumb in the Metroid mythos and breaks the series consistent reputation as the best action/exploration title available, it is not a bad game. The visuals, sounds, and play are all well within the established Metroid world and don't do the history a disservice in the least. But if I see Ridley & Kraid playin' baseball, there will be trouble

This week in Halo...

I already did this once before, but I keep finding interesting shreds of news and gotta report it. Halo 2 by the numbers is a breakdown from Bungie showing exactly how the online multiplayer stats add up. A staggering 2 billion games have been played since the Nov 9, 2004 launch, with 21 thousand years of game time logged. Thats fucked up. I finally got my Game Informer in the mail yesterday with the full story on Spartan 458 that hit the net last week. Well, the whole 'story' is still under wraps, but its pretty clear that this female spartan isn't going to look any different than Chief, and the only alternate costume shown is Red. I full expect a Blue costume to make it in as well, and hopefully the geniuses at Rooster Teeth will find some way to use it. Speaking of RT, they launched the 64th episode of "Red VS Blue" this week. I gotta wonder how long they can keep this up and keep it funny, but the always do. They're only just now mining the fun that can be had with a Covenant Elite. Game Informer also ran a blurb in the "Loose Talk" column suggesting that 2 scripts for Halo 3 exist to keep the 'real' story under wraps and that not all Bungie employees know what they're working on. Its unlikely the script that was circling the web a few days ago was one of them. Its also worth noting that Halo 3 aint done until its done, but the rumour that the original Halo: Combat Evolved playable over Xbox Live as a bonus to Halo 3 would terrifically sweet. Finally, this video is not Halo 3 but looks kinda neat anyway.

Apple gaming... no seriously!

Developer.apple.com has an article up about Aspyr's development of PC ports to the new Intel-powered Macs coming next year. With such a ready solution to the age-old problem of Apple being years behind on even the games they do get... could we be heading toward more simultaneous release PC and Mac games? And if that happens, will Apple be able to chip away at the hardcore PC gamer audience and 'switch' the one group no one ever suspected. Even I'm not gullible enough to suggest that the PC crowd who lovingly build, upgrade, customize, and maintain their gaming rigs would give it up for an iMac. But the iMac audience that is out there buying them might want to buy some games too. So continues the courtship of the casual gamer, where the real money is. On a seemingly unrelated note, Sony is not worried about a video iPod competing with the PSP. They really don't have to be worried right now, but now that Apple has conquered music, and moving on to video, who says they won't go after portable gaming next? Imagine digital delivery like game tap is already doing right in the iTunes interface and playable on a gaming iPod. Homebrew gaming would have a new wide audience just like podcasts and videocasts have now on the iPod, and by putting games right next to video and music in an online outlet just like they are in brick and mortar stores you'd be entice a group that might never pick up a PSP or even a GBA. Think I'm crazy? Read this:

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“The format that’s under discussion right now, HD versus Blu-ray, that’s simply the last physical format we’ll ever have. Even videos in the future will either be on a disk in your pocket or over the Internet and therefore far more convenient for you.”

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Ya know who said that? Bill Gates. Microsoft's Xbox360 is designed to download games as much as it is to play ones you put in the disc tray. If they're banking on this as the future, imagine how much more better prepared Apple would be as the owner of the internet's most popular legal download application?

Duck Hunt

check out this goth's wicked Duck Hunt lego model!

Super Princess Peach Commercial

its delightfully Japanese!

Unlock a Starfox Ship in Zelda Game It looks like an odd photoshop job, but that arwing in Ocarina of Time is real. the video clearly shows Link target locking and taking it down the with boomerang....

This week in Halo...

In what seems to be the biggest news Bungie could talk about with the exception of Halo 3, A Halo character will appear in DOA4, and Peter Jackson will produce, and WETA will execute special effect for the Halo movie Edit:just learned the link below is a big fake. kinda figured that, but I'll leave the link for anyone who's curious... And just for fun, here's the latest Halo 3 rumor, indicating a massive, two disk game with a much longer single player mission and the multiplayer content left to the second disk and a slew of new game types, one of which infers teams working together to outlast a Flood onslaught. To top it off, theres a link to a script, which might be bullshit. I haven't read it yet. At the very least, rumours and hype like this will be encouraging Bungie to REALLY work their asses off. At X05, it was said that Bungie is not bound to a PS3 release and they will finish when they will finish, which is just what I want to hear.