• Tag Archives retrogaming

  • Review: Popful Mail (Sega CD)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Review of Popful Mail by Working Designs for the Sega CD from the May 1995 issue of Sega Visions.

    sega_visions_1995_may_084

    Source: Sega Visions – May 1995

    Popful Mail is another action RPG by Working Designs, the same company that released the Lunar and Vay games, among others. The Sega CD didn’t have a huge number of games and many of them are FMV crap but if you were a fan of the Working Designs’ action RPGs then it was a must have system, at least until Working Designs started developing these games for the PlayStation a few years later. Working Designs did a great job of exploiting the strengths of the Sega CD (massive storage for the time) to create lengthy RPGs with a good amount of nicely done animated sequences and voice acting.

    I never got the impression that the oddly named Popful Mail was as good as the Lunar series but it is still a great game and it is a hard (expensive) game to come by today for the Sega CD. Above is a short review of the game from the May 1995 issue of Sega Visions and as you can see, it is all positive.

    Popful Mail was also released on the Super Famicom, PC Engine CD and Windows platform but these were Japan only releases with no English translation. If you wanted the English version, the Sega CD was and remains the only way to get it.





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  • Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/158701264546/super-mario-bros-3-nes

    Super Mario Bros. 3 is widely regarded as one of the best video games ever. It is THE 2D platformer. SMB 3 introduced a number of elements that have been used in a variety of Super Mario Bros. games since including the overworld map, the ability to fly and the super leaf item, Bowser’s red hair, the Koopalings, the Chain Chomps, and more.

    SMB 3 took a rather large team and a long time to develop compared to most other games at the time. The team consisted of more than ten people and the game took two years to develop. However, Nintendo was well rewarded for their efforts. They game sold over 17 million copies worldwide and generated half a billion dollars in revenue in the U.S. alone. Adjusted for inflation, it has grossed 1.7 billion dollars. SMB 3 has also had a number of re-releases and remakes including in Super Mario All-Stars for the Super NES 1993 and Wii in 2010, the confusingly named Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Game Boy Advance, a Wii Virtual Console version in 2007 and virtual console versions for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014.

    This game was actually released in Japan in 1988, a few weeks after SMB 2 was released in the U.S. However, Super Mario Bros. 3 would not be released in the U.S. for nearly another two years. The big reason for this was because of the ROM chip shortage at the time. One of the results of this was that the movie The Wizard was released a couple of months before the game. The Wizard served as a huge advertising vehicle for SMB 3 because of its role in the movie.




    📂This entry was posted in Nintendo (NES) Retro Games 📎and tagged

  • NARC (NES)

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    Narc was first a 1988 arcade game and was the first to be released by Williams after being acquired by Midway. Several ports were made to various home systems in 1990 including to the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and NES. The home computer versions were all done by Ocean software while the NES port was done by Rare and published by Acclaim.

    Most of the home ports were pretty average. I think the reason NARC is remembered today is because it was a controversial game at the time. It was one of the first games with this level of violence. The goal of the game is to arrest or kill various junkies, drug dealers and king pins culminating with Mr. Big. In the manual for the NES version of the game it was described as the first video game with a strong anti-drug message. Ironically, all references to drugs were removed from the NES version.

    Nintendo has always had seemingly odd censorship rules. In this particular game, references to drugs were removed but most or all of the violence was retained. However, the splash of blood on the cover was changed to be yellow so it didn’t look like blood.

    Midway Arcade Treasures 2 released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube had an emulated version of the arcade version of the game (with a few glitches) and in 2005 there was a remake of the game (also controversial) for the PS2, Xbox and PC.

    The ad and screenshots above are all from the NES version.

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/158615816812/tarpittales-bust-mr-big





    📂This entry was posted in Nintendo (NES) Retro Games 📎and tagged