SSPA – Strider

One of the best things about early home video game consoles was the novelty of ownership; Instead of losing your hard saved quarters in a single afternoon, you could play the games you love as long as you had hours in the day. However, the home ports of arcade games were rarely ever quite as impressive as the real deal. Anytime from the days of the Atari 2600 until the end of the PlayStation 1 era, arcade cabinets had capabilities well beyond the efforts of the home consoles. The Atari systems and NES could make approximations of old mainstays like Galaga, Pac-Man, and Millipede…

Arcade

NES

…but you weren’t getting a game with the same graphics and audio as the arcade for titles like Gradius and Double Dragon.

SSPA – Vampire: Master of Darkness

The full moon is in the night sky, a chill creeps through the dark night air, and the faintest sound of whispers and laughter down dark streets and boarded up houses cast a shroud of fear over the hearts of the brave. It is Halloween once again! And although Halloween is a wonderful time for cerebral, mind melting horror, it’s also a time for lighter, spoopy thrills. Gamers looking for a less intense horror game this season may look back to Konami’s early Castlevania games, Capcom’s Ghosts N’ Goblins, or even the umpteen billion Dracula games by Sony Imagesoft. This year, I want to draw attention to an obscure title tucked away in the no man’s land of gaming history on Sega’s Game Gear; Vampire: Master of Darkness.

GameBoy Round-Up: Randomizer

Something I’ve heard a few people online and in person say about the Nintendo Switch is that it is both a home console and a handheld console. It can rest in a dock for use on your TV or be picked up and taken anywhere provided the battery is charged. Although the Switch in my home never leaves the dock, I’ve seen many people using them at parks, in malls, on the train, and in restaurants. The system has been showing up the same way the 3DS was a couple of years ago, and the DS before it, and the GameBoy Advance before that, and so on and so forth. It got me wondering if the switch has marked the end of the GameBoy.

SSPA – Alien³

 -Contains spoilers for the first three Alien movies-

Every Halloween there are a few films I love to watch, and among the cheesy old horror schlock and the classic thrillers, there is one classic that’s a must see every year: Ridley Scott’s Alien. This film combines elements of slasher films, haunted house stories, and body horror to tell a wholly engrossing and terrifying tale. The crew of the spaceship Nostromo encounter a mysterious alien crash site on a distant planet. After a hideous organism latches to the face of one of their party and he is taken back on board for medical treatment, an viscous creature bursts from his chest. This new alien swiftly matures and hunts down the remaining crew one by one. With little hope against this fearsome beast, the crew are desperate to kill it, or otherwise escape the ship.

Been There, Played That – Final Fantasy VII Remake

The stars have aligned and Square Enix has parted the clouds to reveal a new teaser trailer for their Final Fantasy VII remake. This project has been a holy grail to rival the decade long development of Duke Nukem Forever. However, unlike with Duke whose ultimate delivery couldn’t possibly live up to expectations, hope springs eternal for the Square Soft golden child.

SSPA – Mission: Impossible (1990)

Another Mission: Impossible movie has recently come and gone, and I have found myself lost once again in the magic of that hokey 60’s spy show. The adventures of the original Impossible Mission Force have been a delight to me for years. The tension of a disguise almost uncovered, the absurdity of the gadgets and techniques rolled out with every episode, and the satisfaction of seeing a miraculous and crazy plan work out in the end all build up to make a really goofy, but thoroughly enjoyable experience, although it is definitely not for everyone.

SSPA – The Terminator

I don’t really know how I feel about the works of director James Cameron. I like a good number of his films, but some of this other movies just don’t do it for me. I felt that the direction taken by Rambo: First Blood Part II didn’t really do the original any justice, but that’s less on Cameron’s directing and more on Stallone’s writing. As a huge fan of Ridley Scott’s original Alien film, and its claustrophobic horror setting, I dislike Cameron’s over the top action take on the series with the fan-favorite sequel, Aliens. The Abyss is interesting and well shot, albeit rather preachy at the end. True Lies was fun, but Titanic was pretty dull, and Avatar may have been impressive in IMAX 3D, but standing on its own as a story, it’s pretty weak.

SSPA – 007: Goldeneye

Some time ago, I read the John Le Carre novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Le Carre’s sober, unromantic description of espionage during the cold war was very gripping and powerful. There are no fantastic gadgets, or cat stroking villains plotting world domination, just ordinary fallible people working two sides of a complex and grim international conflict. His novels make for fascinating and engrossing reading and he was very successful in his day, but something that stood out to me about this book and the rest of Le Carre’s works was how very rare it seems to be that we see a down to earth approach to spy stories. I suppose that, for as interesting as the real world of spies is, it is far too complex and depressingly serious for broad general appeal. Sometimes you just want to see the good guy fool absurdly evil bad guys. People long for the thrill of a sudden gunfight or a final act twist. That may be why one of the most enduring franchises in media history is Ian Flemming’s James Bond.

SSPA – Harvest Moon 64

Between the time when bad sales drowned the Dreamcast, and the rise of the virtual reality console wars, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Solid Pawn, destined to wear the crown of a pretty well decked out retro games collection upon a troubled brow. It is I, the woman herself, who alone can tell thee of this saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

SSPA – Die Hard

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. And since we’ve no place to go, let’s watch the hands down greatest Christmas movie of all time, Die Hard! Yes, it’s an action movie, and no, it doesn’t talk about the true meaning of Christmas, but it is about getting together with your loved ones and the importance of family, be it how much you love your wife, whose being held hostage by a murderer, or the bond between a terrorist and his brother whose neck you broke. It’s set on Christmas eve, festive decorations and trees abound, and it ends with Vaughn Monroe singing Let It Snow. That’s good enough for me to pop this classic on every December.