Overview forgames

"Where do you want to go today?"

Hover!

What’s that, you say?  You’ve never played Hover! before?!  The classic game from Microsoft that was shipped with every copy of Windows 95?  Huh?  Were you passing the time with Minesweeper and Solitaire instead?  Bah!  The only way to redeem yourself now is to play it.  But don’t fret as it may be easier to play this 19 year old game than you might think!

(Nine exclamation points and question marks were used in six broken sentences.  Not bad for a day’s work in online journalism.)

Journey through Phobos with a master

Just saw this cool interview John Romero did with IGN.  LTTP, but was still neat, none the less.

But it wasn’t your traditional interview.  They did this while playing through the first episode of Doom.  He gave some insightful details of the game’s development and the level designs as they played through the game.  Both the interviewer, Ryan McCaffrrey, and John Romero were incredibly knowledgeable of all the game’s secrets while playing through it in co-op mode in, I think, Nightmare mode.

That old school feel

Glad to see the Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick project, Thimbleweed Park, has made not only its initial funding goal, but has almost doubled it!  And there’s still 37 hours to go!

I so would have loved to have donated for the project to get the boxed copy of the game, but funding is a little tight now -- especially after all the Christmas shopping I’ve just finished doing.  If I had gotten that PS4, I would really be deep in the red this month!

I still can’t believe how they’re really sticking to that graphic design of having the game look like it was built with the SCUMM engine from over 20 years ago.  Will definitely be grabbing this one when it gets released.

Champagne problems

*sigh*  It’s been just about a week since I lost the opportunity to get the PS4 20th Anniversary Edition.  I was convinced to get it because I noted a while ago that it would be the perfect console if they went back to the color of the original PlayStation.  I said this because I was getting a bit tired of all the consoles being black; including all of my home entertainment electronics.

You see, I’ve been a fan of PlayStation since the beginning.  I own all three consoles, the PSP, Vita, and plan to get a PSTV some time soon.  My gaming library is easily eclipsed by PlayStation name.  Seeing the 20th anniversary PS4 was a beautiful looking device with the original grey color, the brightly colored PS logo, and the controller symbols embossed on the lower half made me want this more than anything I wanted in a while.

Since this special edition was in very limited quantities, I watched PlayStation’s twitter feed like a hawk all Saturday morning during the PSX event.  I kept watching it even after the event ended.  Around an hour later I did the foolish thing by being a responsible apartment tenant and vacuumed the living room.  When I checked the twitter feed again I noticed they posted the link to get the PS4 10 minutes earlier!  During the three some-odd hours of watching that feed, they decided to post during the 15 minutes I was away doing something else!

By the time I got to the store page the servers were already slammed.  For an hour I tried to get through the purchase process, but whenever I tried to get to the next page I was greeted with a 404 styled message.  I constantly went back to the previous page, refreshed, and tried again.  Over the course of an hour I crawled my way through the process until I got to the final confirmation page.  This is as far as I got.  I tried for a while but I eventually gave up.  I tried again a few hours later but was greeted with a message noting that they sold out.  Dang.

I guess it wasn’t meant to be.  So instead I celebrated Sony’s near quarter century in the gaming console market by downloading the 20th anniversary theme on my Vita.  It’s a very clean theme and one I might keep for a while.  I love the music and how they sprinkled the start-up jingles into it.  It would have been perfect if they had the SCE, THX style jingle play whenever I swipe the start screen to get to the home menu.  In addition, I’m also planning to load up my Vita with a few PS1 games later this weekend.

Happy 20th anniversary PlayStation!

Walk This Way

Revolution X

Ah yeah! Rev X.  A little gem from the ‘90s arcade scene featuring Aerosmith.  You know a game is going to be great when you mix guns, rock music, and ladies and then cram it all into a stand up arcade cabinet.  Remember: Music is the weapon.

The rabbit hole

Oh noes!  I think I just entered into something I’ll regret.