Secret Shame Revealed II: I love China Warrior
Secret Shame Revealed is a recurring feature in which the 2D-X staff admits to loving truly awful games. This outing, Jeffrey L. Wilson fesses up to China Warrior.
When I was just a lad of 15 years, I had to make a major choice in the fall of 1989: would I beg my mother for a SEGA Genesis or a Turbo Grafx-16 to satiate my gaming lusts that holiday season? I plundered the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Video Games & Computer Entertainment for months on end in order to get the nitty gritty on the two systems. The result? I decided to go TG-16.
At the time that made sense for two very important reasons. Firstly, SEGA was my sworn enemy. The company had dared to challenge Nintendo and its 8-bit NES with the SEGA Master System, which sparked many a schoolyard pissing match between the fanboy factions. Secondly, the game screenshots on the back of the TG-16’s Halloween-like orange and black box made the system feel like a true next-level machine. Big sprites! Colors! More on screen enemies!
After a year of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, my mom surprised me with a copy of China Warrior. The game’s protagonist (a Bruce Lee clone with none of his badassedness) and human enemies filled half the screen. Half the screen. Super Mario, Ryu Hayabusa, Little Mac, and a host of other NES stars were downright liliputian in comparison and, in my adolescent mind, couldn’t touch the graphical might of the Turbo’s 16-bit power. The only problem? That game was utter, utter ass. But I still love it.
Dungeon Fighter Online’s latest update sees higher player levels, new fighting areas
Dungeon Fighter Online (2D-X‘ favorite beat ‘em up of 2009) is receiving a big league content update in “Threshold of Power,” which will be available tomorrow January 27. This major addition ups the level cap to Level 50, and offers players hundreds of new items, dozens of new quests, several new skills for each character class, and new Advanced Avatar Items. Some of the new fighting areas include (courtesy of Nexon America):
Mini Fighter Emerges From Closed Beta With New Gameplay Tweaks
It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news about CJ Internet’s MMO action-fighter, Mini Fighter, but things have changed since we’ve interviewed the company back in August. The closed beta has ended, and the game is now open to the public, with a few new tweaks to make the game tighter.
Based on feedback from the closed beta, a number of improvements have been made to speed up loading times for low bandwidth users and improve overall performance. Characters and leaderboards have also been reset, so the only advantage players can carry over from the closed beta is the experience they gained in the game’s various battle modes. Some knowledge from the head honcho:
“We want Mini Fighter to be the most action-packed experience it can possibly be, and we believe that listening to our community is the best way to make that happen,” said Youngjong Jung, President and CEO of CJ Internet. “We invite players both new and old to join the Open Beta and experience the online brawl firsthand!”
That experience could be important, however, because the first Mini Fighter Battle Championship is scheduled to kick off in early January. Players who want to test their skills will be able to compete in three-on-three Team Battles or one-on-one Grand Arena matches, and winners will walk away with up to $4,500 in prize money.
Registration for the Team Battle matches opens today, while qualifying rounds for the Grand Arena matches will take place at the start of the championship. For more information about Mini Fighter and to join the Open Beta, please visit the official website.
Review: Dungeon Fighter Online (PC)
Dungeon Fighter Online has been in open beta or a number of weeks now, which has given MMO fans the chance to thoroughly sample the gameplay – - and I’ve been amongst them.
Unlike other reviewable games that are more or less fixed when presented to the public, Dungeon Fighter Online’s MMO roots opens the door to evolving content (something, I suppose, may become commonplace with games of all types thanks to DLC), which renders a review as a snapshot in time. Therefore, take this Dungeon Fighter Online review as version 1.0 of an ever-changing document.
The mark of a well-crafted MMO is the number of hours that it draws from a player, and I can say with truth that I’ve poured more time into Dungeon Fighter Online in the past two weeks than any other game released this year.
Dungeon Fighter Online Beta Now Open To The Public
It’s time to grab your weapon and spells and take to the battlefield.
Today, Nexon America officially opened the Dungeon Fighter Online beta testing to all gamers after months of anticipation. This Neople-created MMO brawler combines the 2D scrapping elements of beat ‘em ups with the fantasy elements inherent to massively multi-player online titles.
Gamers who sign up for the open beta will get a chance to put five character classes through their paces: Fighter, Gunner, Mage, Priest, and Slayer. They can be used in four player quests, or in 1-on-1 or team-based battles.
If you want more information about the game mechanics, check out out in-depth interview with Dungeon Fighter Online’s managing producer, Herb Yang.
Unbound Saga Now Available From PSN for $15
If you’re looking to smash heads this evening, Rick Ajax and Lori Machete are more than willing to be your tools of destruction with today’s release of Vogster’s Unbound Saga. The digital download tells the tale of two comic book characters who wage war against the book’s creator (“The Maker”) and his minions. I pow wowed with the game’s senior producer not too long ago about the creation of the game and play mechanics; it may prove a worthy read before cracking skulls.
Interview: 4 Questions for Mike Kennedy, Senior Producer of Unbound Saga
Interviews can be unpredictable beasts. One may suffer from incessant marketing speak, while the next may be littered with all manners of awesome – - the latter is the category in which I place the words of Mike Kennedy, senior producer of Unbound Saga, the upcoming PSP brawler. There are three things that you should keep with you long after reading this:
- Modern gaming’s deep control schemes may be an impediment to fun
- Unbound Saga, in a way, is much like bubble wrap
- Repetitive gameplay isn’t necessarily a bad thing when well-crafted.
King of Fighters Online: The Evolution of the Beat Em Up Genre?
I’ve been harping on the need for a company to take the Beat ‘Em Up genre by the hand and modernize it for quite some time now, so when the further details of King of Fighters Online landed in my inbox, I smiled knowing that there’s a game developer out there that has the same passion and vision for the genre as I. At least that’s what I hope.
Dragonfly/Triple Games’ King of Fighters Online takes SNK Playmore’s much-loved fighters and places them in the mean streets of what I could only hope is South Town to take on a slew of baddies, including the bastardly Rugal. Seemingly tapping my mind for what I would consider essential gameplay elements of a modern brawler, King of Fighters Online integrates three major fighting game elements: special moves, blocking, and tag team play. While the former is nothing new (after all, Streets of Rage II was stacked with supers back in the day), the middle has been too rarely utilized, and the latter is particularly interesting as you can swap players during battle – - hopefully mid-attack, so you can set up some big time combos in the PvP and PvE modes.
The PC-only game isn’t slated to be release until 2010, which is perhaps the best news, because, as is, the environments look quite lifeless, and the enemy designs look like something straight out of Ringling Bros. Still, I give props to the development team for the cell-shaded polygonal models that retain the look (and sounds!) of their sprite-based counterparts, and from the action seen in the clip, the snappy fighting pace.
Between this and the King of Fighters Skystage shooter coming to XBLA, I’m pretty geeked for what SNK Playmore has in store for us fans. And maybe, just maybe, this will inspire Capcom to give us a real Final Fight sequel.
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