Since it’s almost Christmas, there should be no better time to talk about a game whose main character is Santa himself! Ladies and gentleman, this is DAZE BEFORE CHRISTMAS!
Developed by FUNCOM this game was released in 1994 for the Sega Genesis and some time later for the SNES.
You can read the plot in form of a poem when you start the game, but I’ll resume it for you. The evil Louse the Mouse kidnapped Santa’s elfs, reindeers and presents. And now it’s up to Santa to kick some ass and retrieve what has been taken from him!
Featuring 24 levels, this game can be considered fairly easy. Most of the stages are well detailed, but some are poor designed or too short.
If Santa drinks coffee...
...he turns into some sort of DEVIL-SANTA...what?
The gameplay is pretty simple as well, as Santa, you can jump and throw magic to defeat your enemies. You must retrieve the presents and let free the elves. When you kill an enemy it could drop a blue present, which are used for the bonus stages. If you manage to get a cup of coffee then things gets weird and you become Anti Claus (a devil looking Santa Claus), which can..huh…beat the crap of enemies using his big sack… Yeah! Apart from that you become invincible as well, but other than hitting some big walls that blocks you way at some stages, it’s useless.
Basic Commands:
D-Pad – Moves Character
A and C- Uses Magic/Hits with Sack(as Anti-Santa)
B- Jumps
These are some items that you will be finding in the game:
PRESENTS – The presents you must retrieve. Some of them may contain enemies, bombs or hats.
HAT – Energy/health
FIRE POWER UP – Turns Santa’s magic to fire, making him able to melt ice.
COFFEE – Turns Santa into Anti-Claus, making him invincible, but unable to open presents.
BOMB – Found inside presents they harm you if you’re near then when they explode.
BELL – Checkpoint. If you die, you’ll return to this point.
STAR – Exit for some levels.
EXTRA LIFE – Gives an extra life (duh)
I'll not try to explain this one...
The soundtrack isn’t really exciting…unless you get turned on while listening to Christmas remixes. Other than that, they fit the game really well.
This game does not bring anything new, it’s pretty much a generig adventure/platformer, but it’s one of the few that features Santa as the main character. Back then it was really fun, as most of the kids loved this kind of game. Unfortunately I doubt any kid would try playing it nowadays. They’re pretty much playing the last blood-filled FPS at their modern consoles. But, i you’re really into Christmas and want to have some fun while playing a simple and decent adventure while feasting on some turkey, this is your game!
Not a big fan of Nintendo new gadgets and portables neither willing to wait for Sony Vita? Hungry for something that you used to feel while playing that nowadays games fail to deliver but don’t have so much time to spent in front of a TV or emulator? None of the above, but still thinks Zelda: A Link to the Past is the best Zelda game ever?
Worry not, my friend, because Hyperkin has just solved your problems. Which, by the way, you didn’t even knew you had before reading this. Remember the guy who transformed a full N64 into a portable system? Well, Hyperkin just did this for you. With the Super Nintendo. Yeap, I’m not joking. Yes, you can order it now. And no, I don’t know if its compatible with those tricky-dicky cartridges.
But who cares? Shut up and take my money, Christmas style!
Hi everyone, today is a god day to pop some zombie brains out! Today I’m gonna talk about The House of the Dead 2 for Arcade!
Released in 1998, The House of the Dead 2 is a classic shooting game for Arcade that later was ported to Sega’s Dreamcast. I’d like to say that house of the Dead series is like Resident Evil meets Virtual Cop because well… basically House of the Dead is a “Halloween” version of Virtual Cop.
Ok, first I’m going to talk about the plot. The House of the Dead 2’s plot is a direct sequel for the events of the first game. The story take place 2 years after the Curien Mansion incident. An organization called AMS is trying to prevent similar events to the Curien case. So they start an investigation of the Curien case, however the agent G has gone missing an his last known position was in Venice, Italy. Later there’s a report that a new zombie outbreak has started in the exactly same location.
Agents James Taylor and Gary Stewart are dispatched along with Amy Crystal and Harry Harris to investigate. Well that’s it, House of the Dead 2 feature a B-MOVIE like story and I personally thinks that this is a good think.
The House of the Dead 2 has the same game mechanics as it’s predecessor. You progress through a on-rails adventure shooting everything that pops in the screen. In order to hit the targets you’ll use light gun, this light gun is pretty much the same used in virtual cop series and works perfectly. You shoot enemies with the trigger and reload your weapon shooting off-screen.
The House of the Dead 2 is a rail based game however you can choose between different routes during stages but in the end they all will lead you to the same point. I think that The House of the Dead 2 is a very difficult game, it’s hard to beat the game without losing continues. It requires lots of practice and some strategies. Most part of the enemies are very strong, however they can be killed really fast if you shoot them in the head, so I recommend that you practice your aiming skills. Another stuff that I like to do in order to increase my performance in this game is reload my weapon blocking the light gun with my left hand instead of aiming off-screen. If you do this you can save a lot of precious time reloading your weapon and you’re gonna need it when facing lots of enemies at once.
Speaking about hard enemies, every stage of The House of the Dead 2 features a tough boss. Bosses can be difficult to kill, however before every boss fight a book appears on-screen showing bosses weak spots, so don’t worry about knowing how to beat the bosses, the main problem is to be good enough.
The House of the Dead 2 feature 6 levels and every level has a final boss.
The graphics are nice, characters are very well modeled with sharp textures and details, maybe they could put some more accurate lighting effects but at the end of the day this game has some cool graphics. I like the way that you can put some holes in zombies and even blast they heads off, these gory effects are awesome.
Sound is pretty decent with nice tunes and special effects however the voice actors are terrible, I think that this game features the WORST voice acting that I heard in my entire life. If you think that Deep Fear has bad voice actors it’s because you never played The House of the Dead 2 yet… They’re so ridiculous that sometimes it´s funny.
You can check by yourself here:
Well that´s all I have to say about The House of the Dead 2, it´s a nice on-rails shooter and my favorite one from The House of the Dead series.
Long time without posting, but here I am again. Today I gonna write about Jamestown – legend of the lost colony.
I must say that I was really impressed with this game. The visual is stunning, it has an amazing gameplay and it’s really challenging like an oldschool game should be.
Really nice pixel art here
I really felt like playing a game from the old times made by and large company with this one. I can’t complain of almost nothing in this game. Well, there is a story that I couldn’t care (and that you can also open an alternative story using a lot of points…that I unlocked and played again to see it, but I couldn’t pay any attention again for it. Oh well…), but I don’t think that’s exactly a problem in the game (maybe the story is good and I’m just to lazy and too enchanted with the gameplay and art of the game to lose my time reading the story). I would say that’s even a positive point to the game, you are not forced to see the story, but you need to keep a button pressed for some time to skip it, avoiding you to skip a scene by accident.
So maybe the only thing I can complain in the game is the short size of it. You have only 5 stages to play, each one taking about 5 minutes if you don’t die, so you will probably end the story mode in 40 minutes or less.
The game tries to compensate this problem with a lot of extra small challenges reusing a part of the scenarios of the story mode. Those challenges can take your attention for sometime, being really fun to play and hard to complete, but after a while it feels a little repetitive.
But back to the nice things of the game. Something that makes the gameplay a little longer is the possibility to unlock new ships as you advance in the story, each ship having a different way to play and strategies, making you want to play some stages again to test your new ship.
And that’s pretty much it. Like you would expect from this type of game you have a ton of enemies and bullets on the screen to avoid and destroy and a small overkiller ship to do the job.
Resume
If you don’t care to pay 10 bucks on a short game, it totally worth it for the experience.
Hi everyone, this week we have a very special game! This game, at least in my opinion, was one of the best ones between the 3D adventures from 32/64 bit era.
Today, I´m gonna talk about Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, one of my favorite Playstation games!
Soul Reaver was released in 1999 for Playstation and PC and later in 2000 was ported to Sega Dreamcast. The version that I´m gonna review is the Playstation version because that´s the version that I have played back them. (However the screenshots are from the PC version, they´re pretty much the same thing excepted for the fact that the Playstation version has a lower resolution and some pop in objects.)
This game is the sequel of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, but instead of being a top down RPG as Blood Omen, Soul Reaver is a 3D action adventure. The plot take place 1500 years after Blood Omen in an era where vampires rule the earth leaded by they great leader Kain.
You pick up the role of Raziel, the general of Kain´s vampiric army, who surpass his master Kain turning into a more evolved vampire with big wings.
In an act of jealousy, Kain tear Raziel wings apart and thrown him into the lake of the dead. After many centuries Raziel is resurrected by an elder god. However, Raziel reborn as a deformed wraith.
The elder god tells Raziel that the world is falling apart because of Kain´s madness and give him the mission to kill Kain in order to reestablish the world balance and fulfill Raziel´s vengeance.
Damn, this game´s plot is awesome! Holly crap, generally I don´t care much about plots, but holly crap this game has an awesome story with awesome characters!
You can also check this game amazing introduction here:
Soul Reaver´s gameplay is pretty simple for an adventure, but this is not a complain, after all, that make things a lot easier to handle. You move your character using your D-PAD, jump with X, attack and active stuff with SQUARE, feed with CIRCLE and grab/throw/impale things with TRIANGLE. To crouch use L1 and to lock an enemy target use R1, you can also rotate your camera with L2 and R2. Ah, I almost forgot to tell, in Soul Reaver you have to absorb souls to replenish your energy, so after you kill an enemy, keep pressing CIRCLE to make Raziel absorb enemy’s souls.
There´s no death in Soul Reaver, after all, Raziel is already dead. So when you run out of HP, you´ll become a spirit and leave the material world and enter in the spirit world.
That´s another feature of this game, in order to solve some puzzles you´ll have to switch between material world and spirit world, that´s kinda cool because the world morphs around you in real-time, there´s no loading screen or something like that. You can change to the spirit world anytime however to go back to the material world you´ll need to find some blue portals that allows you to return to the material plan. When you´re in the spirit world you cannot open doors or collect weapons, after all you became a spirit, a ghost that cannot interfere in the material world, or at least not directly.
Your enemies are not immortal however they´re hard to kill, in the material world most part of your enemies are vampires or vampire creatures, in order to destroy them you have to beat the crap out of them and them throw them into the fire/sunlight or even water, or you can impale them with a spear or throw them into spikes, this is the only way to kill them, speaking about spears Raziel can use lots of objects as a weapon, you can use spears, torches or even rocks to attack enemies.
As you progress you´ll receive more abilities like climbing walls and even the ability to use a cool energy sword called Soul Reaver.
During your quest you´ll be able to collect HP expansions in a way very similar to The legend of Zelda where you collect pieces of heart to increase your total health, in Soul Reaver you have to collect 5 parts to increase your total HP. You´ll also have to look for Glyphs. Glyphs are some king of relic that grants you extra powers like pull enemies away. Soul Reaver feature lots of combat however combat is not the main objective in this game, this is an exploration/puzzle solving game, so be prepared for lots of puzzles. The first boss battle is something like a puzzle so this´s not a Devil May Cry like game, it´s more like a dark and twisted version of Zelda.
You can save your game anywhere however every time that you start the game you´ll respawn at the first room of the game, but you can use portals to teleport between areas, you only have to find those portals during the game so you´ll not loose your time travelling from point A to point B, this system works from a similar way to those portals from Castlevania Symphony of the Night.
Well these are the most important aspects of Soul Reaver´s gameplay, I hope that I´ve covered everything that really matters, if I forgot something important I´m sorry, Soul Reaver is a very rich game and sometimes I find myself lost with so many things to tell…
Now let´s talk about the graphics…
Soul Reaver has one of the best graphics that I ever saw on the Playstation, I thing that is one of the most beautiful 3D game from the 32/64 bit era, it really impresses me even today. It´s a good example of how 3D games can be beautiful without lots of polygons, advanced shaders, physics and stuff. I really like the characters models, they´re very well made, Raziel and Kain looks awesome and monsters really looks like horrible creatures, the only models that I didin´t like too much are the human models, they´re are not so well done like the rest of the creatures and characters, I think that´s because there is a city with lots of them walking around and they cannot spare so much process power.
Backgrounds are amazing , with nice textures and cool details, there are lots of flags that really moves like fabric and the way that torches cast light in the dark areas are great too.
The opening FMV is awesome, it´s very well done it´s a shame that we have FMV only in that part, the rest of the game feature real-time cut scenes that are pretty good however I really wanted to see more videos like that.
Sound and music are amazing too, the voice actors are great, Raziel´s voice is really cool, I think that the way that Raziel tells his story resembles a lot the prince from Prince of Persia Sands of Time. Sound effects are great but music is suberb, I really like the tunes specially the music that plays when you´re Raziel´s clan Territory.
So that´s conclude my review today, I really hope that everyone that haven´t played Soul Reaver go and give it a try, it´s an amazing game and I know LOTS of people who never heard a word about it. It really impress me how a such amazing game became overlooked like this. I hope that Eidos “resurrect” this awesome series in future. Now go my friends and become Soul Reavers, angels of death!
horaciocorral
2:06 pm on October 22, 2011 Permalink
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I used to play this great game a lot, but I was way far from finish it. My brother, a hardcore Metal Gear fan, was close enough to the task. Nonetheless, its a great game even if compared with the current games. The game mechanics was great and very creative. It would be really great to see a new installment in this series. Great game. Good article!
Fue el primer videojuego que me gustó que de hecho tiene una historia. Antes de Soul reaver (un juego con buena trama), Mario bros era lo maximo para mi.
Hi everyone! It´s me again, Danilo, with a brand new old game!
This week´s game is Joe & Mac or Caveman Ninja in Japan… Man those japanese guys are genius, everything can be transformed into a ninja for them, there are no limits for the ninjamation or… ok, forget it.
Joe & Mac was released in 1991 by DATA EAST for arcade and ported to home consoles. The version I´m going to review is the Super Nes version, after all, the SNES version was my favorite one and also is one of the funniest platform game I´ve played on my SNES.
As you start the game the plot is shown right away. The deal is that a bunch of Neanderthal guys crashed in Joe & Mac village and scare all the cavebabes. Now it´s up to Joe and Mac find them and bring them back. Hum… looks fair enough to me, after all, babes are important!
During the game you can jump with B and attack with Y.
In the begging of any level, you only have a close range weapon, but as you progress and get some weapon items, you can launch rocks, boomerangs and even fireballs with your club.
Those items can be found inside eggs. You also can replenish your health bar by collection pieces of meat.
There are three different sizes of meat.
Small piece of meat -> half of a heart
Medium piece of meat -> one heart
Large piece of meat -> replenish all your hearts
Besides the pieces of meat you also can find an 1up that give you an extra life.
There are also lots of enemies during stages, and every stage has a boss, after you finish any level you´ll travel to a Super Mario World like screen showing a map of your progress.
You also can go back to the levels that you´re already beat in order to collect more items and lives.
Joe & Mac feature 7 levels and is a pretty easy however very fun game. I highly recommend you to play this game with a friend, it´s twice more fun.
Graphics are pretty well done, and feature a cool cartoonish visual. Love the Tyrannosaurus Rex face, Joe and Mac are very well drawn too.
Sound and music are good too, tunes are very catch and has that prehistoric feel.
That´s all about Joe & Mac for SNES, I hope that everyone enjoy this game as much as I.
Esse eu fechei mil vezes… ele vinha num cartucho de mil em 1 jogos que tinha um outro jogo de um vampirinho, que eu não lembro o nome e nem sei descrever mto bem, vcs imaginam algum jogo de vampirinho com os graficos cartoon assim?
Cara, eu lembro dum jogo que é muito parecido com esse que tinha um capetinha ou vampirinho, mas ele era o inimigo do protagonista.
O nome era Congo’s Caper, no japão ele era a continuação do Joe e Mac. Por isso que a versão japonesa de Joe e Mac 2 na real chama-se Joe e Mac 3.
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