A MIND JOKE

Several years ago, an Italian teenager discovered a strange game on a blank CD. The game was, unsettling, to say the least, in it's minimalist appearance, and seemingly pointless existence. The game consisted simply of a checkered maze, with nauseating 8-bit music. He knew not what to make of such a find, and  immediately uploaded the game to show his friends

Alien Zombie MegaDeath

Most videogame enthusiasts are at least aware of the character SonSon, from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, but  unlike the rest of that game's roster, few are aware of the game from which she originated. That game was an arcade platformer/shooter, titled SonSon, based on Son Wukong of Chinese myth. The game was similar to most Horizontal shooters of the time, with the exception that you could only fire while perched on a set of tiered platforms. The game is super-obscure, but it hasn't been completely forgotten, especially not by the folks at PomPom Games.

In 2010, PomPom released Alien Zombie Megadeath, a spiritual-successor of sorts to SonSon on the PSN. It's very reminiscent of SonSon, only more refined, and featuring much more variety in terms of objectives, and general gameplay. It also has the truly terrible title of Alien Zombie Megadeath. Makes me think they trying too hard.

Seriously. They're trying too hard.. And if anyone knows about trying too hard, it's Dave Mustaine.

RokkoChan

Hey out there gamers and game-ettes. I hope I classed up some of you tasteless hacks with my last MegaMan review. Much like Kevin Costner is type-cast as a bland, boring, slow line reading actor, I'm type cast as the token MegaMan guy, and you know what that means!

No! It's time for a MegaMan review, only this time, it's a MegaMan clone! And a damn good one! But no imitation can ever be as good as the original right? Well lets find out with this Rule 63 variant of our favorite blue bomber and jump right in with RokkoChan.

Primary

As a PBR swilling indie gamer, I have a soft spot for underground platformers you've probably never heard of. They tend to be reminiscent of Mario before it was cool, or perhaps after it became ironic.

As such, I always like to check out the latest plaformer guns before they become cool. One such game might be a little too top 40 for me, since it has over 850,000 hits on Newgrounds which makes it too passe'. However, since I know many of you are sheeple who are too conformist to know about this game, so I decided to review it anyway.

Eh, it stopped being cool when it got popular.

Zaga-33

Roguelikes are a bit of a double-edged sword in the gaming world. On one-hand, since they are easy to create, there exists a large number of would-be devs churning out Roguelike after Roguelike, so there is no short supply of available games. On the other hand, this huge amount of content is staggering, and might intimidate a new player, which is to say nothing of the genre itself. Roguelikes, are by definition, daunting and involved; their complexity lies in micro-managment. It's a wide, varied genre, so what you're micro-managing will vary, be it supplies, food, or even just yourself, but it's still micro-management nonetheless. This level of unnecessary tinkering is but a part of the game's appeal to enthusiasts, but is also the chief reason many are repelled altogether.

This is where the so called 'Coffee-Break' games come into play. Originally used the describe Doom: The Roguelike, a worthwhile RL that I've covered previously, the term has been adopted by the Roguelike community as a looseley-defined subgenre, describing any and all casual RLs that focus more on action, and less on resource-management. Zaga-33 takes the idea of a casual-Roguelike to it's logical extreme, creating an almost arcade-like experience.

Note: Does not actually take place in space

Utte Yosili

Cats frequently chew on cardboard boxes, and in retaliation, the boxes make it as hard as possible to allow the cat to climb inside of them. As a result, the relationship between cats and cardboard boxes is strained at best. However, when the earth is under attack by space marshmallows, terrorist cats, and Yeti, even the most bitter enemies must pull together and defend the world from... Weird shit.

In his own way he is perhaps, the most dangerous cat who ever lived!

Sonic 2 Beta

During the late eighties, and early nineties it was difficult for any consumer-level hardware to really dig themselves a competitive niche in the videogame market, at least this was the case in North America, and Japan. The reason for this was the borderline monopoly that Nintendo had going; 1 in 5 homes in America had a Nintendo Entertainment System. This firm market-share, was established with the help of a Robot - packaged in to trick people into thinking it was a toy, rather than a videogame console - atop piles of dead-Atari clones. The Nintendo had a lot of things going for it, and was a major breath of fresh-air for both the consumer, and an industry that was literally on it's knees.

Well, not literally. It's an abstract noun.

In 1989, arcade stalwart, Service Games, better known by their contraction, SEGA, introduced a powerful new piece of tech, that promised that with it's BLAST-PROCESSING it could do what NINTENDON'T. Haha, get it? They used their name as a slam against them! It's even more hilarious, because nothing stated in those ads really meant anything; Blast Processing, muh like Grade A Beef, is a meaningless buzz-word. McDonald's uses Grad A beef, and their 'food' still tastes like Blast-Processing.

Space Funeral

Of all the RPG Maker titles that I have had the pleasure of playing, Space Funeral definitely sticks out as the oddest. It's similar to Mother in that they both parody the genre, but Space Funeral definitely takes the weirdness factor up a notch. The aesthetics and dialogue are definitely unique and come together to give the game a quirky charm. The music ranges from Noise Rock, to Electronic, to...I don't really know and the sprites have a disturbing, yet narm-y appeal to them.