Tag Archives: sega genesis

Food For Thought, From New Authors, Posts By Active Authors, Retro

Sonic 3Disappointment

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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 →

Console

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

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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 →

Food For Thought, General Commentary

The Return of Side-Scrollers and a Quick Discussion of Other Trends in Gaming

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Not long ago, I was playing a game on the Wii called “Muramasa: The Demon Blade”.  This game is a side-scrolling action game, and it got me thinking about something likely much more than a normal person should have.  But, since I’m already thinking about it, I may as well drag you into my thoughts, as well.

We’re all familiar with side-scrollers, right?  Lots of old games were this format.  “Mario” and “Metroid” and “Sonic” and “Donkey Kong”.  And I can keep going to take up space, but I shan’t.  These games were often like this on the old consoles, such as the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, but then that began to change.  I remember when the Nintendo 64 came out, we started to get these fancy, new 3D games, like “Super Mario 64”, “Donkey Kong 64”, and a new series I found superbly delightful, “Banjo-Kazooie”.  You didn’t really see side-scrollers so much anymore, except on handhelds and the “Kirby” series, which has remained in that format to this day.  And as you’d expect, side-scrollers that became 3D continued to be 3D down through the years because, well, what’s new and fancy usually becomes commonplace.  We haven’t seen a decline in graphics over the years, and a series that gains the addition of voice acting usually doesn’t lose it.  Nevertheless, I’ve been noticing a trend lately. Continue reading The Return of Side-Scrollers and a Quick Discussion of Other Trends in Gaming →