Tag Archives: sega

Where Have All The Arcade Sports Games Gone?

A couple of months ago I repurchased a GameCube, a console that I previously had access to as a child/young teen and loved playing. Strangely even though I hadn’t touched the system for over 10 years, my mum had still stored away some of my old GameCube games (mum you are a legend!). Although most of the games she had held on to were sadly not very good, I found one game amongst the others that I had a lot of fun with many years ago. The game is question is Midway Games’ arcade soccer game, RedCard (known as RedCard 20-03 outside of Europe). Continue reading Where Have All The Arcade Sports Games Gone?

Sonic 3Disappointment

The year is 1997, it’s June and my birthday has just passed by. I had received some money from my relatives and there was one thing, or one game rather that I wanted to spend it on. The game in question was Sonic 3D. I’m grew up a Sega kid and as a child I was obsessed with Sonic The Hedgehog. I had played the first three games of the franchise and couldn’t wait to see my videogame hero realised in 3D.

My mum took me to a videogame store and we searched for the Megadrive games. I almost immediately found Sonic 3D, but next to it sat two Sonic games that I hadn’t played before; Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic Spinball. Both of these games combined cost the same price as Sonic 3D, which was the around the same amount of money that I had been given. Nevertheless, I wasn’t interested in either of these two games. I gazed upon the Sonic 3D boxart, the European version featured a picture of Sonic’s face bursting from the front of the case in three-dimensional glory. As someone who had only experienced 2D videogames up until this point, you can imagine as a child of 6 years old, how incredible this looked. My imagination began to race as I wondered how amazing this game would be. Continue reading Sonic 3Disappointment

The Duck Discusses the Wii, 360, and PS3 Generation: Part 2-360 Boxes

Image by Flickr User: ChipperMist
Image by Flickr User: ChipperMist

Not long ago, I published a post discussing what I like and dislike about the Wii, and seeing as the next console of this particular generation that I bought was the XBox 360, it makes sense for Microsoft’s console to be the subject of the second post in this series.  It’s a funny thing, though, how I got this console in the first place, because I am more of a PlayStation fan than an XBox fan, so it would stand to reason that I would have been much more inclined to purchase a console made by Sony over one made by Microsoft.  Unfortunately, at the time, the PS3 was much too expensive, and it didn’t have any games I really cared for yet that weren’t already on the 360 (this was obviously before I became a “Ratchet and Clank” fan…).  Since the games I wanted at that time were all on the 360, plus that console would also allow me to play any new “Halo” games, this became the next console I added to my gaming family.

And when I first started playing the 360, I was immediately impressed with the graphics, which were way ahead of the Wii, and even though the first two games I played were not as good as I was expecting (“Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts” and “Sonic the Hedgehog”, the 2006 version, shudder, gag, shiver), I did have a good time playing “Halo 3” (even though it was short) and “Final Fantasy XIII” (despite its flaws), the latter of which came with my console.  (I even got this little waste of time thing on one end of the console that says “Final Fantasy XIII” on it.  Jealous?)  Plus, I was just pretty thrilled that this new XBox had “Final Fantasy” games as part of its library now, as during the last generation, only the PS2 had such an honor.  My game collection was further improved with the addition of “Halo: Reach” and “Halo 4”, which were awesome, and I even had the pleasure of expanding my game library with over 40 Sega Genesis games on “Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection”.  In the end, I ended up really enjoying my 360, and I loved it way more than the original XBox.  And now, anymore of my thoughts on this console will be listed below.  (As usual, my main focus is on gaming, not the other features the 360 has to offer, and extra info was found on Wikipedia.) Continue reading The Duck Discusses the Wii, 360, and PS3 Generation: Part 2-360 Boxes

Why Games Should Do Away With Extra Lives

Image by Flickr User: Yoshi Gizmo
Image by Flickr User: Yoshi Gizmo

I grew up playing video games that used extra lives.  The old “Mario” games had them and the old “Donkey Kong Country” series, too, and it was just a feature that you had to deal with.  As you played through such a game, level by level, it was always on your mind how many lives you had left.  And as you played, your main purpose being to complete the level, it was always a bit of a secondary objective to collect more of these extra lives.  I remember how very satisfying it was every time I collected enough bananas in “DKC” to acquire yet another balloon in the upper corner of the screen.  Each life meant extra chances.  It meant security.  One more time you could slipup and still be all right.  They were a good thing and one item I sought after most.

But, sometimes, extra lives were a hassle.  I remember every time I started playing a new file of “Donkey Kong Country 2”, I would just rack up tons of extra lives during my first hour of gameplay.  I collected so many darn extra lives, I was effectively unstoppable.  I could die as many times as I pleased, and it mattered not.  I’d go from world to world, and when no save point was yet available, it didn’t matter, because I had those extra lives.  And then, I’d stop playing for the day, and when I returned, the lives were always reset to a much smaller number, my hard work collecting lives the previous day all for naught. Continue reading Why Games Should Do Away With Extra Lives

Great Games I Almost Missed

Image by Flickr User: Cinder6
Image by Flickr User: Cinder6

Sometimes, I like to think about how things would be if I made different decisions.  Like, if I had never decided to buy the PlayStation 2, my first venture outside my previously Nintendo-only domain, what games would I be playing now?  What would my collection look like?  I’m sure we all have times where there is a great game we didn’t plan on getting, but we ended up playing it because of what a friend said about it or because it caught our attention in the store during a search for a completely different game.  And when this happens, I often think about how close I came to missing out on such a good game.  And maybe we all do that, or maybe it’s just me.  Because I think too much into things sometimes.

And when I get to thinking, I realize all manner of things.  If I didn’t just happen to spot “Okami” and “Vexx” and decide to give them a try, I would have missed out on some fantastic games.  And “Portal 2”, actually, was thanks to good things Cary and Hatm0nster said about it, or I would have never bought the game.  (Thanks, guys.)  Seriously, I saw it in the stores, and all I thought was, “That game sure has a weird cover”, and that was that.  Then, I heard people talk about this game, looked it up one day, and there it was, a game I had seen before and just simply passed by.  Small world.  Or just, small video game section of the store.  I dunno.  But, it’s weird.  Also, thanks to more good reviews on blogs I’ve read, I bought “Chrono Trigger” and “Chrono Cross”.  Never heard of those games before, but now I own them, and I really look forward to playing them. Continue reading Great Games I Almost Missed

Glitches That Involve Freezing and the Rage They Cause

Screenshot by Flickr User: Sklathill
Screenshot by Flickr User: Sklathill

Today’s post is the last of my little glitch series, until I experience enough new ones to write another post about them.  Won’t that be nice?  Ahem, this time I discuss freezing, quite possibly the worst glitch ever.  You can’t work through it.  It just happens, and there’s nothing you can do.  Nothing.  Games never un-freeze.  No, of course, not!  That would be too tolerable if they unfroze!  I hate games that freeze!

Lesser annoying freezing: “Donkey Kong Country 3” is my only glitchy Super Nintendo game.  It always gets slow in the lightning level, and one day, I accidentally touched the cartridge when the game was starting up.  This caused most of my files to be erased, which was quite upsetting.  But, the glitch I am getting to is when I once went into one of the bear’s houses, and the screen suddenly got distorted and froze.  Ever since, I’ve been terrified to go in the bear’s places ever again (not that it’s ever been not stressful to walk into a bear’s house)!  Fortunately, at least no more freezing has occurred, and it’s my least favorite “DKC” game anyway.  Aren’t you proud of the positive spin I put on this glitch?  Also, in “Harvest Moon 64”, walking over the bridge was an ordeal (and there weren’t even any bears), as the game would freeze occasionally when you did.  It was an evil bridge.  Evil. Continue reading Glitches That Involve Freezing and the Rage They Cause

In Defense of the Gaming Unitasker

Image by Flickr user Great Beyond
Image by Flickr user Great Beyond

Here on United We Game, one of the things that often come up in our posts and comments has how wonderful it is to be a gamer these days. With nothing less than a plethora of games at our fingertips and means by which to play them, it’s hard to imagine going back to time when gaming wasn’t so prevalent. I know I wouldn’t want to, except…well…there is one thing I kind of miss. The gaming-only console. For a couple decades, from arcade machines to the rise of home consoles, we lived with devices that served one purpose and one purpose only: to play video games.  They weren’t music players, they weren’t video players, they weren’t connected to an information superhighway; they were just video game consoles.

Continue reading In Defense of the Gaming Unitasker