Articles tagged with: gba

Pokemon

seanstar on Monday, 06 September 2010. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

Editor's Note: You Gotta Catch 'em All is surely one of the most insidious marketing ploys ever devised against children. While the existence of groups that condemn Pokémon as satanic is laughable, the ridiculous popularity of the franchise amongst children is not. But of course there's something more to the craze than clever marketing -- the series is renowned for its remarkable depth. Seanstar offers here a simultaneously fun, irreverent, and jaded look back at the beginnings of this apparent demon-spawn that makes for a fantastic read, whatever your feelings about the franchise. -mossy_11


Pokémon, or "You Gotta Catch 'em All, so go beg mommy and daddy to buy you the latest and greatest version of the same exact game because it's really a different game, we swear!" is the ubiquitous Nintendo handheld cash-cow that debuted in 1996, long before the Game Boy was in color. Consequently, the original "Red" and "Blue" versions of the game (and the Japanese Red and Green, and eventual Yellow, versions) were primarily differentiated by the fact that the Red version circuit board was mounted in a red plastic case, the Blue version in blue, the Green version in green, and the Yellow version in leftover Donkey Kong Land shells. Or maybe brand new Yellow. The world will never know. All versions could be played in full variable-hue monochrome if you had a Super Game Boy, the primary advantage of this mode being to showcase the fact that most towns had been named vaguely after colors by changing the game to the closest SNES-palette representation of the color in question as soon as you entered.

F-Zero

seanstar on Monday, 02 August 2010. Posted in Retro Game of the Week

Editor's note: I never really got into the F-Zero games. I thought they looked cool and knew they had a cult following, but found them too intimidating to seriously try. Nevertheless, I had enough experience with F-Zero on the SNES to admire the series from afar. Seanstar has provided an interesting look at the entire series here, with the biggest take-away being that F-Zero games seldom disappoint (unlike certain other arcade racing franchises). -mossy_11


 

SNES-F-Zero-OriginalBox-f-smThe year is 2560. Burgeoning intergalactic trade and the social and economic boon that followed created a new class of wealthy investors looking for new and exciting forms of entertainment. And so was born F-Zero, an intergalactic grand prix of high stakes and higher speeds, bringing together characters of all species and cultures from across the universe...

In actuality, F-Zero was the brainchild of Nintendo's EAD studio. It debuted on the Super Nintendo in 1990. From the outset, F-Zero was notable for its technical prowess -- inventing the mode-7 3rd-person racing genre, creating never-before-felt physics that hugged the line between driving and skating, laying out a palette of vibrant and distinct worlds and machines, giving the SPC sound chip a fair workout, and all the while never compromising on fluid gameplay that flew with such speed it would put Sonic the Hedgehog on edge.