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Wii U's Virtual Console appears to be a big step back
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. There's a lot about the Wii U Virtual Console that's encouraging. Starting it off – even before the official launch of the service – with a sale that gives users great games for 30 cents is a smart move, one that should entice lots of people to give it a try. And the implementation of the games is great, with a surfeit of control options well beyond what the Wii Virtual Console offered.And, to state the obvious, playing Balloon Fight on the GamePad is fantastic, just like playing Balloon Fight anywhere is.But despite these encouraging steps, today's Virtual Console announcements also disappoints me and leads me to believe that the Virtual Console as a service peaked back on the Wii. I don't have much hope that it's going to get much better in this next generation.
How Under Defeat HD fills your HDTV
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. Vertical shooters don't really mix well with HDTVs and their 16-by-9 aspect ratios. They would if people were crazy enough to turn their TVs sideways, but that's generally not the most feasible option. Most shooters released on HD systems relegate the game screen to a relatively small window to compensate, leaving a lot of dead space on the screen.Under Defeat HD features a mode, new to the PS3 release of this Dreamcast-era game, designed to fill the whole widescreen display, called "New Order." It works well, and makes a convincing argument that 16-by-9 display can work ... for Under Defeat.
GungHo on its new PSOne import initiative
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. Last week, GungHo Online Entertainment America joined the ranks of PSOne Imports publishers with a bumper crop of six Japanese games, all available on the PlayStation Store for $5.99 each. Since it's so rare – an initiative only taken to heart by MonkeyPaw Games in the past, and one that requires extensive licensing work for a potentially niche product – I asked Gungho president and CEO Jun Iwasaki about the company's plans."We are hoping to bring over as many PSOne Classics as possible," Iwasaki, who previously ran XSEED, told me, "but oftentimes these releases require license deals." He explained that the somewhat unusual collection of games, ranging from shooter collection Zanac X Zanac to dekotora board game Art Camion Sugorokuden, wasn't curated according to some unifying theme. "We were able to secure the licenses for these particular PSOne Classics, so we went ahead and released them first."So far, Zanac x Zanac seems to be getting the most attention out of the six titles," Iwasaki added.
Wii Virtual Console: A look back at the service that looks back
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. There will surely be a slow trickle of Neo Geo games and the occasional Capcom release, but with the release of the Wii U, and the announcement of a Wii that drops literally all backward compatibility including the Virtual Console, I think we can safely assume the Wii Virtual Console is essentially dead. And having just now established its death, it seems like an appropriate, if artificial, opportunity to look back, to determine how successful an experiment Nintendo's old games marketplace was.While there is plenty to lament about how the service turned out, it's easy to overlook just how unprecedentedly fantastic it is, even in its current state.
On Sega's continued commitment to retro games, even Toejam & Earl
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. Just a couple of weeks ago, I used this column as a platform to praise Sega's handling of an obscure retro game, and to urge you all to buy said game. I guess that's going to be a regular thing now!The latest Sega release to go above and beyond is Sega Vintage Collection: Toejam & Earl (and the two Toejam & Earl games on PSN, sold separately). While previously I would have said that the best case scenario for such a release would be an unaltered ROM dump – and the worst, a poorly performing ROM dump – Sega went one step beyond and added online co-op.
It's a Virtual Console Halloween
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. If you're going to be at home this Halloween, waiting to dispense candy and tinny Wilhelm screams to neighborhood children, why not pass the time with some spooky games? While it's easy to tell you to go play the latest zombie whatever or Castlevania, I am opting instead to mine the downloadable retro lineup of our most terrifying console: the Nintendo Wii.There might still be some Castlevania.
Dancing Eyes and the death of a Generation
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. The Namco Generations series brought us cool reimaginings of Namco's ubiquitous arcade games, including Pac-Man Championship Edition DX and Galaga Legions DX. It can also be assumed to retroactively include games like Pac-Man Championship Edition that came out before the series was named.Namco Generations appears to have come to an end now – at least Namco's been quiet about it – and that likely end came before two of the announced Generations games could make it to release. For some reason, Namco planned updates for relatively obscure arcade games Metro-Cross and Dancing Eyes alongside the Pac-Man and Galaga flagships.Above, you can see what the company had in mind for the PS3 update of Dancing Eyes (embedded from a third-party Youtube channel since Namco made its own video private). The PS3 game is sort of like Qix, except instead of surrounding rectangular spaces in a flat, stark vector retroscape, you're a monkey cutting pieces off a girl's clothes. The surprise isn't that it was canceled this year; rather, the surprise is that someone at Namco thought this was a viable game concept on two separate occasions.
An elusive PlayStation classic is yours for the grappling
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. What if, in a parallel universe, Bionic Commando's ideas were expanded not into a behind-the-back 3D action game, but into a quieter, more puzzle-oriented game focused entirely on the mechanics of the grappling hook? And, instead of a nonsensical storyline and big environments, the developer put all of its effort into making the grappling hook more complex?And then, instead of a resurrected Hitler and his army of pseudo-Nazis, all the enemies were giant fish.
Your Vita is a TurboExpress*
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. Last year, Hudson snuck a selection of Turbografx-16 games onto the PlayStation Store, playable on both PS3 and PSP. It's a very small selection in North America at just ten games (this is the first caveat of many I'll mention), but it includes some of the best on the platform, like Bonk's Adventure, Alien Crush, Neutopia, and not China Warrior.I feel it's my duty to periodically remind people of the availability of Turbografx-16 games, so now that there's another platform that can play them, namely the PlayStation Vita, I'm taking advantage of the opportunity. These downloads work on both home systems (PS3) and portable systems (PSP and Vita), allowing you to experience the cutting-edge cross-compatibility that these games enjoyed over 20 years ago between the Turbografx-16 and the TurboExpress handheld.I guess I should bring up all the other caveats before we get too excited.
Delving into the differences between Spelunker and Spelunky
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. I'm a fan of the genre of game that I can best encapsulate as "people dying in caves." For whatever reason, there's a subset of sidescrolling platformers that puts players in the role of an archaeologist or other explorer, navigating subterranean tunnels full of deadly creatures, traps of unknown origin, and always, always spikes.Examples of this genre include Cave Story, La-Mulana, and Aban Hawkins & The 1000/1001 Spikes, all published (or almost published) by cave game fans at Nicalis. Other examples include the two games I want to talk about, which share a lot of DNA but diverge in interesting ways: Mossmouth's brilliant Spelunky, and one of the progenitors of the genre, Spelunker (and its modern-ish sequel Spelunker HD). Spelunker was first released way back in 1983 as an Atari computer game; it later found success and infamy in arcades and on the NES.Mossmouth's XBLA game has been a critical success since its release in July, and was beloved as a freeware PC game before that. Conversely, most people don't have anything nice to say about Spelunker, and I think my appreciation of the PS3 sequel puts me in a fairly elite club. However, that club most assuredly includes Spelunky creator Derek Yu.
Jet Set Radio's creators: Where are they now?
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. The HD port of Jet Set Radio arrives today on PS3 via PlayStation Plus. A new credit appears on the updated version: it was ported by a company called Blit Software, who also handled the downloadable versions of Sonic CD. The original, of course, was done by Sega's Smilebit team, who couldn't be brought in to handle the port on account of not existing anymore.Despite a spectacular career on the Dreamcast, during which it created both JSR and The Typing of the Dead, along with a standout performance record on Xbox (Gunvalkyrie, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and, of course, Jet Set Radio Future), Smilebit was disbanded in 2004.After playing Jet Set Radio, I assumed everyone involved with it would go on to even brighter things, in terms of both critical and financial success and explosive creativity. They've certainly achieved success, at the very least.%Gallery-150619%
The appeal of a console with no future
Welcome to Living in the Past, a weekly column about what's new in old games. Now get off our lawn. A new dedicated handheld game console from a company that is neither Nintendo nor Sony, with support from only one publisher and with absolutely zero prospects for new games, would seem like an impossible sell – especially at $200. And yet, upon seeing Blaze's Neo Geo X system, I was overwhelmed with the desire to possess it. Other usually rational Joystiq staffers have expressed similar feelings.I have a hard time understanding why I would be so interested in a new console that only plays old games. But I think the dedicated nature of it is exactly the draw.
