Overview forgames

Resistance (may be futile)

I never gave a second thought about Tom Clancy's The Division until just a few days ago when I saw a quick look for it and now I wanna play it so badly. But as temping as it may be, I need to resist playing it as I know this game will suck me in and kill months and months of precious evenings when I can be doing something more constructive…like, say…this website for example.

It actually looks more daunting than Peace Walker, and that took month to complete last year. I don’t want a repeat of that again in 2016.

Furry space opera

Star Fox

Back during the 16-bit days I was on team Sega, so I missed out on a lot of what the SNES had to offer. For the area where I grew up at and for the elementary and middle schools I attended, the Sega Genesis was the dominant force when it came to the console wars for the time. Luckily I had a friend who was in the minority and owned an SNES which gave me an opportunity to at least dip my toes in and try out a small fraction of the huge catalog of games for what would arguably be Nintendo’s greatest home console. For me, the game I kept going back to was Star Fox. Dem phat polygons kept me comin’ back for more.

Now this is what it's like when worlds collide

What’s this? Not only are you, the fine reader of this fabulous website, getting two articles for the video games journal for the month, but also a feature?! It may be hard to believe, but it’s true! WHO LOVES YA, BABY!

Marvel Fighting Games: From Civil Wars to Clashing of Universes

Here we have a central showcasing of all the games from the Marvel vs. Capcom series. But since this feature encompasses the other Marvel fighting games prior to the MvC series, let’s, for the sake of simplicity, call the whole darn thing the Marvel fighting series. Don’t worry, though, as we can keep this title a secret just between us.

Reviewin’ reviews

These styles of written reviews were so good. It was such a clean looking, informative way to review games. It was even better later on when one person would have a lengthier write-up and where a sentence of each person’s review was bold faced so to allow the reader to get-to-the-point of what the reviewer wanted to say. The layout was great for both at-a-glance and in depth reading.

I guess the current version of this is when the “what've you been playing?” segment for a video game podcast occurs.

Double yellow lines

Here we go with a new batch of game write-ups for the video games journal. It took longer than expected to get this going again due to RL stuff plus working on the backend of this site, but here we are on the verge of a few months’ worth of new articles and features. Aaand to kick things off, here is not one but TWO game articles. Wooo!

18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker

At first it seems like an odd fit to have an arcade game where all you do is drive a Semi-trailer truck, transporting cargo from one destination to another. But leave it to Sega to make it interesting by basically turning it into a game of bumper cars but with tractor trailers. Fun? You bet! Nonsense? Yup!

The King of Route 66

This one flew way under my radar to the point where I didn’t even know this game existed until just about a year ago. I was all like, whoa! 18 Wheeler has a sequel?! Guessing this was the rarest of the rarest games, I was planning to pay a good chunk of cash to snag a copy of it. Luckily it’s not a game most people hold a great deal of value for so I was able to get it for an extremely inexpensive price. Let the good times roll.

Saturday night adventures

Been tinkering with something I’ve never really messed with before: emulation.

One reason for me delving into this new territory is finally being able to play import PS2 and PS1 games that I’ve bought over the years but never got around to purchasing a modded console to play them. The other reason is finding better ways to capture gameplay footage for screenshots.

I’m really surprised at how far emulation has gone. Last time I fiddled with it was around 15 years ago when SNES emulation was all the rage. A friend handed me a CD-R with an emulator and some ROMs and said "have fun." A few nights ago I tested a PS2 emulator by using my physical copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. For the record: socks were blown off. I couldn’t believe how well it played the game with no slowdown, jittering, and the such; even though it was rendering 3D environments in real time.

Now I’m trying to get my PS1 game saves from my non-official PS1 memory card to the emulator on my PC. There are lots of hoops to jump through, but at least there’s a solution for this.