Retro

The 90s created a LOT of first person shooters. Guns piled on guns as Wolfenstein 3D created a movement and Doom simply swallowed everything up as it created a masterpiece amongst first person shooters. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie but just couldn’t seem to get a slice as Doom rocked the house and allowed no imitators to the party. Operation Body Count was one of those. In this day and age, I don’t think this game would make it to the shelves as it may be too closely related to past tragic events.  Suit up; we’re taking a peek at Operation Body Count.

For most of us, when we were young we dreamt of winning trophy after trophy and medal after medal. Some, like myself, wanted to go all the way and bring home a gold medal for our country. Sadly, it requires a lifelong commitment and is usually pretty costly. You'll need the best trainers available as well as access to the best gear. I pretty much say squash that. I'll take the cheaper route and try win a gold medal in Winter Games for the Commodore 64. Be warned though, playing Winter Games almost requires as much dedication as the actual thing. If you aren't ready to dedicate your body and mind, then watching the Winter Olympics might be the easiest way out. Grab your skates and lets go.

So far in the invisible pigeon-holing council, we've looked at some very general genres from the overly general MMO to the unexpected Beat 'em Up. Today, however, we look at something completely different. We're going to be taking a look at the extremely tight niche genre not terribly well known in the United States, referred to as “bullet hell.” Known as 弾幕 or "danmaku" games in Japan (where the genre is substantially more common than it is elsewhere) and alternatively referred to as manic shooters, bullet hell games are an ultimate extension of the shoot 'em up genre. Unlike MMO or Beat 'em Up, one might call bullet hell an "end-point genre" - you learn most everything you need to know about a game simply by hearing that it is a bullet hell game. So what does this mean to us as gamers? Find out after the jump.

Good Ol' Games hit a sweet spot with me when they released Caesar III last week. I had never played Caesar III, but I spent a lot of time playing Caesar II, as the game was highly addicting. It wasn't a game that made a huge impact in my gaming life. Oddly I remember it well because it was the game I was playing when my dog passed away. That's not to give the game a negative image. It's a highly addicting game, being one of those games that require lots of multitasking and micro managing. For anyone who is a fan of the Sim genre, Caesar III will be a great challenge. It goes beyond the basic city construction and natural destruction and throws in order requirements, pleasing the gods, and war. Get ready for some Caesar III.

Looks like the folks over at Cutstuff have been working on a mod for Skulltag titled Megaman 8-Bit Deathmatch and much like it's namesake, it's an 8-bit Megaman deathmatch mod.  It looks like it plays like a wicked version of Doom with all the weapons replaced with Megaman-style weaponry in arenas that were seemingly pulled right out of the NES games.  While some of you may be put off by the blocky visuals, it warms a nostalgic fire in my heart.  They just put out a trailer for the game, which I urge you to check out.  I can't vouch for the legality of this kind of creation, however if there is one thing for sure, this is the kind of project I can get behind.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

No one can ever say that music hasn't inspired someone to do something. After jamming out with Jay Sean and Sean Paul's "Do You Remember?" song, I decided to remember the past - all the way back to 1982 when Choplifter was released for the Apple II. Now, I wasn't born then, but that doesn't mean I didn't experience the fun of Choplifter. It wasn't until I was five that I began my gaming endeavors on the Commodore 64. We had already owned a large collection of C-64 games, but Choplifter is one of the games that I constantly returned to over the years. After eighteen years I feel that it would be fun to do a review on such an old but yet wonderful game.

Before Ventrilo and before Gamespy.com, there was Mplayer.com. Actually there was also Heat.net, but this review is going to focus mainly on the good memories of my time spent on Mplayer. It is here that I discovered the true world of the internet. This wasn't your ordinary chat room with text spamming the screen every five seconds. This wasn't your big white screen either, with all the usernames off to the side, with no way to talk other than trying to hold your conversation along with the other 50 people who were doing the same thing. Mplayer.com gave me a well organized interface that I used to communicate with people. While doing that, it also gave me my very first place to game. From then on, I was hooked.

ROTT stands for Rise of the Triad, and that's what we'll be going over this week. But just what is Rise of the Triad you say? Only one of the first of the many games that got me hooked on "gibs." The amount of blood dumped into this game was overwhelming when I was 12 years old. I just craved more and more buckets of blood, but unfortunately I was stuck with only the shareware version of the game. That isn't a problem anymore though as your good ol' friend over at GOG.com has it for a whopping $6.00, which is a great deal if you ask me. You get a few small arms in this game, but thats not where the fun lies. It's all in who has the biggest and most badass gun.

This has been a rough year - economic problems will do that. When I sat down to make a list of every game I played in the last year, I was surprised and saddened to find that my list was far shorter than I anticipated. Of the twenty or so games released in 2009 I managed to get my hands on, it was a real challenge to choose my favorites. But every crowd has its standouts, and after much tribulation, I landed on my three favorite games. It just so happens that all three games have absolutely no multiplayer options. Hit the jump to find out what I thought.

Every now and then I like to go through my scrap book of when I was a leader.  Here is a photo of me telling my peasants to milk more cows. Here is another picture of me demanding more iron. This one always gets me, a photo of my well stocked armory. This picture is my people dying of the plague. How did that get in there? Anyways, they were good times. I loved commanding, directing, and seizing fortresses and taking land from others. What do you mean I was never a ruler? Nonsense, I was the Lord of the Realms at the time. I said Realms, not rings. I’ll even give you the rundown of what it takes to be a Lord. Read on.