NES controller rug nerdifies your living room
Etsy strikes again. The creaftspersons at the popular handmade and vintage items supplier has tapped retro gaming love several times in recent months with such unique items as the GameBoy tube dress, 8-bit gaming pendants, NES external storage drives, and Atari wallets. Now we have an NES controller rug.
Kunio returns in two new ass-kicking River City games
Aksys Games appears to be looking to the past for inspiration with the release of two upcoming titles for the Nintendo DS: River City Soccer Hooligans and River City Super Sports Challenge.
Dedicated gamers will remember cleaning up the streets of River City in either the GBA or NES versions of River City Ransom, but this time around you won’t have to worry about saving your girlfriend or beating up waves of gang members for money. The new games adopt a lighter tone and focus more on competitive afterschool sports (similar to Crash ‘n the Boys: Street Challenge) but still try to pay homage to the franchise’s martial arts roots.
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.
Blaster Master: Overdrive coming to WiiWare tomorrow
Talk about a blast from the past! Hyuk hyuk.
Blaster Master: Overdrive, a sequel/update to the NES classic, appeared out of nowhere over the weekend and better yet, it will be available this Monday on WiiWare for 1000 points!! Gosh, if only every game’s release date came within 48 hours of its announcement.
Like the original, Blaster Master: Overdrive blends 2D side-scrolling shooting and platforming with overhead action. Though screenshots are blurry, Blaster Master: Overdrive resembles a late-era SNES game, so y’know, it looks awesome. We can all thank Sunsoft and Victor Ireland’s Gaijinworks for this lovely surprise.
[Hat tip: Destructoid]
Review: 8-bit Left 4 Dead
Filed under: Action, Emulation, Homebrew, and Modding, Reviews
The much talked about 8-Bit version of Left 4 Dead has arrived, and after some quality time with it I can tell you that this is the most addicting game I’ve ever epic failed in. It’s a brutally tough game even in the easier difficulty, and it takes a little bit of time to get accustomed to the controls. The music, however, is awesome. While you may not be able to download this at work and play (it’s deeper than your standard TimeWaster), it’s highly suggested that you give it a shot at home.
8-Bit Gaming Pendants Look Rad
Another Christmas may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean that the spirit of giving must come to an end as well. Treat the geek in you life (be it a best bud, relative, or yourself) to an 8-bit pendant, which will recall the days of yore when or biggest life disappoint was discovering that the princess was in another castle.
Handcrafted by Nicholas D’Amario, these sterling silver trinkets feature pixelated images of Mario, a health heart, and a skull. If those pendants aren’t iconic enough, Mr. D’Amario has also created a D-pad (accented with black enamel) that replicates the look of the classic NES controls.
Prices start at $44, but you can’t put a price on fine art, can you?
Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril invites you to dust off your NES for 2D, 8-bit action
Filed under: Action, Emulation, Homebrew, and Modding
The NES lives! Sort of.
A group of retro-minded dudes at Sivak Games plan to release Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril on a real Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge. Yep, a homebrewed NES game on a real cart, which will be available at website RetroZone. Starring a green-suited floaty kid name Timmy, Battle Kid resembles the Mega Man series, complete with disappearing blocks, rooms full of insta-death spikes, and giant snake bosses.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: QB Eagles Edition
Let’s get it out of the way right now without any setup: QB Eagles is the single greatest sports video game athletes of all time. Unquestionably, there are some who will question the very validity of this final post in the series as this regulates the twin faces of outstanding sports video game athletes, Bo Jackson and Jeremy Roenick, to roles of second bests. It’s understandable; Bo carves up defenses and Roe owns on both sides of the puck. I propose, however, that once QB Eagles’ game is carefully analyzed, many will come to see that he is indeed the Gamebreaker of Gamebreakers.
QB Eagles, in all of his 8-bit glory, is the prototype for broken, scrambling quarterbacks who can kill you with the cannon or wheels; think Warren Moon with the legs of Barry Sanders.
Blip Festival 2009 Rocks NYC Dec 17-19
photo by Marjorie Becker
If you thought that chiptunes were the soundtrack of the nostalgic nerd set, well, you’d be right. But the music genre, which is comprised of compositions crafted on old gaming consoles like the Commodore 64, Game Boy, or NES, continues to grow and thrive, and its Woodstock, Blip Festival, returns to the Big Apple.
The three-day music and arts festival will rock Brooklyn’s Bell House December 17th, 18th, and 19th and is presented by Manhattan arts organization The Tank, in partnership with NYC artist collective 8bitpeoples. Tickets are $15 per day, or $40 bucks for all three days.
Besides neo-retro music, festival-goers can take in daytime workshops, film screenings, and open mic events — all in an open, friendly, all-ages atmosphere, accessible to the hardcore chiptuner and the newcomer. The scheduled line up of artists looks awesome.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: Paste Edition
If you were to take Pete, Joe, Hank and the rest of the American Dreams‘ starting nine, toss them into a blender, and top it off with a scoop of Ted Williams, you’d have the most homerunniest hitting baseball player in gaming history. A man so potent that, much like Madonna or what’s her face from Black Eye Peas who’s too old to keep pretending that she 18, he’s known only by one name: Paste.
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