Darius Gaiden
Playing console shmups in the PAL region can be hit or miss - even if we do get some releases that the US doesn't, we still miss out on a lot of Japanese releases. Nowadays PAL ports aren't an issue, and the 360 is proving to be an excellent home for modern day titles, but during the 32bit era, which was a bright spot in the history of shmups, PAL releases were thin on the ground.

HardcoreGaming101.Net recently published its first book, titled The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures, by Kurt Kalata.

I finally got around to playing my Steam copy of Archon:Classic on my PC over the weekend, a game I had bought when there was a sale on it several months back (good news: it's still a reasonable $9.99). I used an Xbox 360 controller to play the game, which, while playable with a keyboard, is only for Apple II die-hards. Or masochists. In any case, to put it simply, this is exactly the Archon remake/update we were always hoping for, particularly after being crushed by the travesty of Archon Ultra - which never felt right, despite being from the original developers - and games like Wrath Unleashed, which unnecessarily made everything 3D, including the board.

This is Archon in its purest form, 2D, with combat that feels exactly like it did back in the game's 8-bit heyday, which any original fan will tell you is absolutely key to the experience. What's nice is that after the developers of Archon:Classic tuned the game to perfection, they also added in features and modes from all the other versions of the game (secondary attacks, different boards, etc.), and even some additional modes, like concurrent four player, that really enhance the game tremendously. While I haven't tried every mode and feature - yet - according to the trailer, you can even replace the modern visuals with the classic sprites, a fact that I didn't even notice considering the myriad of options to choose from:

X, Y, A, A, B, etc.I've always been a bit divided on Bioware's games after they abandoned their compromising "real time with pause" gameplay and sacrificed their babies to the god of Twitch. If you listen to some people, they would have been doing this all along, but the technology of the time wouldn't allow it (rubbish). The real goal here is to cater to the widest possible demographic, which everyone seems to think means focusing on spectacle and instant gratification (look, mommie, this button makes him chop!). The only concessions to adults is usually some vague notion of "difficult choices" you have to make at a dialog tree or two, and perhaps a lot of boring text here and there that you can find and read if you're so inclined. You know you've come a long ways down a dark road when the closest thing you get to the tabletop experience is clicking through (not reading) a dozen such screens of text and earning an Xbox Live achievement about being "learned."

But anyway, back to Dragon Age 2. I was one of those poor bastards who actually pre-ordered the collector's edition. I sprang for the PC version, which was apparently a mistake. Still, while I was probably more frustrated by the combat and party AI than anything else, I did enjoy other parts of the game, particularly the characters. Yeah, I know it's a bad when the thing I like most about a CRPG is the drama.

Everybody here knows how much I love Her Interactive's Nancy Drew series. These are great adventure games with fun characters and charming atmosphere. Her Interactive has recently expanded its offerings to Apple's mobile line, starting with a game called Shadow Ranch, currently $2 for iPhone/iPod and $5 for iPad, which is in HD (holy cow, I'm jealous). I recently completed the game on my iPhone 4, and am pleased to say it's a fun game that's quite distinctive from its desktop predecessor. I don't think Her Interactive (HI) has really tapped the full potential of the platform, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Mark Plays... Fast Striker by NG:Dev.team (not a soccer game!)
Maniac shooting game ver 1.5

Gameplay and talkie, Let's play

Gemini Wing, excuse the plural in the video title, was also released on the Commodore 64 home computer system and is actually quite a decent conversion done by Imagitec published by Virgin on the Mastertronic Plus label.

It was also released as a tape game as well as disk. Mind you you needed to reload the level each time you played it! Quite a pain to do from tape. Bound to fail sometime. The Disk version was much user friendly although loading in the level each time you had to restart it can be somewhat of a pain and causes needles wear and tear on the 1541 drive.