The Lion King looks innocent enough. Then Level 2 introduces precision jumps, hippo asses, monkey puzzles and one absolutely infuriating ostrich. I made it through Aladdin just fine. Simba broke me before I even reached Level 3.
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A snowy Alabama afternoon, a Movie Gallery rental, and one hell of a Sega Genesis platformer. More than 30 years later, Disney’s Aladdin still looks great, plays beautifully, and reminds me why games didn’t need 80 hours of bullshit to be memorable.
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Bart vs. The Space Mutants was bad when I was a kid and it's still bad today. I played it anyway because it's what I had. Some things don't improve with age.
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Sonic the Hedgehog was built to compete with Mario and it delivered. Thirty years later the speed still holds up, the music is still iconic, and Green Hill Zone is still one of the best opening levels ever designed.
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TaleSpin on the Genesis was the bane of my existence from age seven to ten. I never beat it. Going back on an emulator, I understand why — and I still can't quit it.
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Yakuza 0 is a niche game designed for a Japanese audience first, it's extremely story heavy, and it does have some outdated design mechanics/elements and even graphics (it kinda feels like a remastered PS2 game). If you can get into it though, you're likely to find a very engrossing experience with a lot to offer. If you're like me though, you're probably going to have a hard time getting into it as a newcomer to the series.
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When Alien: Isolation was first announced the reaction of the gaming community was muted with cautious optimism at best coming off of a needless disaster like Colonial Marines that really should have been a fantastic game but unforgivably wasn't. As more footage and information leaked out the sense of optimism grew in spite of itself including from yours truly. The logic was: It can't be any worse than Colonial Marines and it has to be a bounce up. I'm happy to report that broadly speaking this…
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The original Castle of Illusion, released in 1990 for Sega Genesis, remains a timeless classic for a lot of gamers who grew up playing it. It was never the hardest platformer, nor the longest or the best, but it was fun and it had a certain charm to it even for those of us who aren’t fans of Mickey Mouse. Now, thanks to SEGA Studios Australia, the game has been remade largely by the team who made the original. To their credit, they didn’t just slap some HD graphics on make a quick cash-in. This…
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Crazy Taxi ate a lot of my quarters back in the late 90s and early 00s. I finally got around to picking up the PSN version in December, and now it's time for the review in the 40th QDR. Is the PSN version worth owning?
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I never owned a SEGA Dreamcast, so I get to come into this review with no nostalgia whatsoever for what Sonic Adventure 2 was originally like over a decade ago on the Dreamcast. Nor, prior to this, have I ever played a 3D Sonic game that I actually enjoyed (and I loved the first three Sonic games on the Genesis, with Sonic 2 being my favorite one). So when I sat down to play Sonic Adventure 2 HD I had no idea what to expect and my expectations weren’t too high given my feelings towards 3D Sonic…
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Hell Yeah! takes players on bizarre trip through Hell as the Prince of Hell, a rabbit named Ash. The evil rabbit was minding his own business taking a bath with rubber duckies when the paparazzi show up and snap some pictures. The naked bath time photos are posted on the Hellternet where they’ve been viewed by a whopping 100 creatures. Ash is of course completely embarrassed by this and sets out to do the only thing a ruler of Hell can really do, kill everyone who has viewed the pictures. Yeah…
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Hello all and welcome back to The Backlog. It's been quite a while since I've written one of these, so bear with me while I attempt to shake off the rust of the past few months. As my welcome back gift to you, I present Rome: Total War. Rome: Total War is a real-time, turn-based strategy game in which you can select from a few different Roman factions and enter a campaign to eventually, hopefully, take control of all of Rome. You can choose from the Julii, Bruti, or Scipii. There may be one or…
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This is the last of the SEGA Vintage Collection coming to Playstation Network. It’s available now for Playstation Plus subscribers for free, and will be available to all PSN members to purchase in a couple of weeks. This is the same enhanced version of the game that hit Xbox LIVE Arcade on June 10, 2009. Many people have fond memories of this game growing up, having played it in arcades or on a console like the Genesis (amongst many others). I’m not one of those people; in fact, this was the…
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