Category Archives: video games

This Gundam Mahjong Game Has a Really Long Title But It’s Still Really Fun

Posted on by

Despite being a huge fan of video games in general, I haven’t bought very many video games as of late, so I think it’s all too fitting that the latest game I’m playing is something that pretty much doesn’t NEED to be a video game but sure enjoys being one. The game I’m referring to is (deep breath) Kidou Gekidan Haro Ichiza Gundam Mahjong + Zeta: Sara ni Dekiruyou ni Nattana! Or in short, Gundam + Zeta Mahjong for the DS. Being Gundam doesn’t really imply any gameplay functions and mahjong certainly doesn’t require any sort of electronics to play, but it’s got all sorts of fun touches that may have you playing it over regular mahjong (or free online mahjong).

Gundam Mahjong is essentially mahjong + super meter. Before the match itself you pick a character, each of whom have their own special abilities, as well as a  “figure” that gives it own unique bonuses.  Char for example has the ability to see an opponent’s winning tiles if they declare “reach,” as well as the ability to deplete every other super meter. Otherwise it’s just normal mahjong. And if you have trouble remembering the rules, there’s a handy built-in guide (though you’d have to know Japanese to use it).

The playable characters are Amuro, Kai, Bright, Sleggar, Char, Lalah, Ramba Ral, Garma, Dozzle, Kycilia, Gihren, Kamille, Emma, Quattro (yes, he’s considered separate from Char), Jerid, Yazan, Scirocco, and Haman. Other characters make cameos, with Frau Bow and Four Murasame being the most prominent. It’s interesting to note which characters in Gundam are considered “characters of action” in the greater consciousness of its fandom.

The selection of Mobile Suit and Mobile Armor figures (it’s implied in the story mode that everyone is a figure-collecting otaku) is much more broad, tapping not only into the two main series but all of the Mobile Suit Variations and side stories from both the One Year War and the Grypps War. You can even use Johnny Ridden’s Mobile Suits. There are certain Mobile Suits that can only be used by specific characters, like Amuro with the original Gundam, Jerid with the Baund Doc, Haman with the Qubeley, and so on. Part of the fun is in deciding which figures to use with which characters that best utilizes their super moves. Char’s Zaku II for example allows Char to gain meter at 3.5x normal speed, which goes well with his meter-killing super. If you’re a real romantic, I suggest pairing Kycilia Zabi with one of Johnny Ridden’s mobile suits.

There’s a free play mode, a story mode, and you can customize the rule set or use a pre-existing one. The game is packed with clever nods big and small to the Gundam franchise, particularly in the way characters talk to each other during the game. When Garma wins, he will comfort his opponents by telling them that it’s not that they were weak, but that he’s simply too strong. Then he’ll recite his winning hand. The best moments are probably when you declare reach, as the music changes accordingly. Nothing says Char’s about to win more than this song.

Even without the Gundam elements though it’s still a solid mahjong engine, and you can even battle people over wireless and wi-fi. About my only complaint is that sometimes the computer opponents are a bunch of cheaters, but that comes hand in hand with any sort of game like this. So, overall impressions are about as obvious as you can get. If you like Gundam and you like mahjong, then check it out, but don’t trip over yourself in trying to obtain it.

MMM… Megaman 10

Posted on by

Megaman 10. That’s 10 Megamen. Actually, more like 50 or so, but hearing news that last year’s retro revisit of the classic franchise is getting a sequel brought joy and happiness to this anime blogger. There’s a lot of positivity and negativity floating around because of the announcement, and I want to just talk a little about it, go through some of the things that pop up in my head when I read these conversations.

The Megaman series is very special to me. If I had to pick a favorite classic NES series, the Blue Bomber’s exploits would be it. I even wrote an entire post about it  where I talked about the way its graphics affected me.

Two of the most frequent criticisms I saw leveled towards Megaman 9 were that its mode of play and concept of difficulty was a relic of older times that should have stayed buried and that it was a cheap cash grab that fell back on a tried-and-true formula with little innovation and a gimmick to tug at older player’s feelings of nostalgia. While there’s no way to play Megaman 10 at this point, it’s a fairly safe bet that the former complaint will resurface, while the latter’s already being tossed about.

Is there any merit to these criticisms? Well sure, Megaman‘s idea of difficulty falls under the banner of “NES-difficult,” an unofficial term which describes the days where games could be brutal and unforgiving and would often require you to play many times over before you started to get the hang of it. Megaman was particularly cruel. Whereas a game like Super Mario Bros. would place an item somewhere in order to give you some respite, Megaman had a somewhat frequent tendency to deceive, placing items as bait to lure you into inescapable death traps. That’s how Dr. Wily rolled, and whether you could handle that or not was key to whether or not you enjoyed those games.

As for the whole cash-grab thing, I can totally believe that, but that doesn’t diminish the amount of effort that was put into 9 and that I assume will be put into 10. It’s also easy to attack the use of 8-bit sprites as a “gimmick,” but when you actually sit down with a Megaman game you realize just how significant the graphics are towards the gameplay. Yes, what I’m saying is that in this case graphics matter, just not the advancement of graphics. And this is coming from someone who played the hell out of Megaman 8 on his Sega Saturn. I loved how bright and lush that game was, I loved how hitting the bosses with their weaknesses would cause unique effects and animations. I even tolerated the JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE rocketboard sections. But when I went back to the NES Megaman games and Megaman 9, I could really feel the difference that those simple (yet still very good-looking) 8-bit graphics made. They were graphics that assisted the gameplay immensely. Same goes for the music. Try as they might, I’ve never heard a remix of an NES Megaman song that I liked more than the original, and that includes live bands like “The Advantage.” They’re songs that work best as video game music.

Megaman 9 was a look back at things that the series did right. While constantly moving forward in the name of progress is great and all, sometimes a look backwards can be just as important, as it can teach you what to keep and what to discard. Many people called it the best Megaman since 2 and I’m inclined to agree.

So yeah, I’m looking forward to Megaman 10. I hope they make Protoman more unique, rather than just him being the “challenge” character, and I’m eager to see who the third playable character will be. Maybe it’ll be Roll, hot off her victory over Gold Lightan. Or maybe it’ll be Bass making his first non-cameo 8-bit appearance. Better yet, let’s get some multiplayer up in here. If New Super Mario Bros. Wii can do it, why not?

Miyamoto Shigeru Continues to Amaze Me

Posted on by

I recently wrote a post about “Mr. Mario” and his interview regarding New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I decided to take a look at other interviews he’s given, particularly the ones on the Wii’s Nintendo Channel, and as I watched them I realized just how different his mindset is compared to everyone else in the industry at this point. Yes, the fact that he’s a genius who has given birth to many of the great franchises of video game history isn’t anything new, but when you listen to him talk about games, it’s like he’s discussing an entirely foreign subject compared to his peers and contemporaries.

Everyone else is working from the mindset of “how do I foster competition,” or “how do I make this a more enjoyable experience,” or even “what is interactivity and what does it mean,” and they’re all valid questions worth answering, but in contrast the most important question that seems to pop up in Miyamoto’s head is “how do I make life better?” It’s not a matter of him being “better” than anyone else in game design so much as the fact that he’s playing another game entirely.

It’s as if when everyone else is trying to bring guns to a sword fight, Miyamoto brings a cup of tea.

Through the Looking Glass (Translator’s Note: Looking Glass Means Mirror)

Posted on by

Here in the English-speaking anime and gaming internet communities, analyses of translations are never uncommon. Whether it’s to praise a localization or to condemn for whatever reasons such as inaccuracies or censorship, it’s something that comes packaged with media coming from other countries.

One thing we do not see as often though is how Japan reacts to localizations of our cartoons and video games. As such, I’ve compiled a list of some interesting posts, blogs, etc. which look at the world of Japanese-English adaptations from various angles.

Adventures in Localization, MW2 Edition

The most recent thing to come up, apparently the Japanese release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is marred by poor translations overall, which are leading some Japanese games swearing that they will buy the Asian English-language version of the game before this. Sound familiar?

Sakae Moon Street

See this Japanese fan discuss those wild and crazy cartoons from America such as Ben 10, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Code Lyoko! He mostly posts plot summaries and information on voice actors and such, but also posts fanart sometimes, and has a gallery full of his older works. He also speaks some English and has even translated a few posts, such as in his review of the Avatar episode, “The Blind Bandit.”

I think that “Colosseum”, “Macho” and “Sumo wrestler” are loved particularly in the American cartoon. The picture of this film is wonderful. And there are a lot of highlights as for the action scene. I think this action scene is rivaled to “Matrix” or “Ghost in the shell”.

Toph’s character is like a princess more than I had thought. She is keeping the weakness secret on the other side of strength of vender power. I like it. However, of course, she is tough too. And I am surprised because Katara grew up tougher. The director of Avatar wants to show that Katara looks senior compared with Toph, isn’t it?

Dekadenbiyori

In the blogger’s own words, “I don’t know why, but translated Japanese things attract me.” Dekadenbiyori is quite unusual though in that it reviews the English translations of Japanese works FOR Japanese readers, something which I imagine doesn’t have the largest audience but is still a fascinating subject. See here as he tears apart the poor localization of the Shakugan no Shana light novel and its inability to not make the main character sound “special.” You don’t need to know Japanese in order to understand his disdain for this translation.

Burning Becky Review

Japanese Super Blogger and Mitsudomoe fan Tamagomago writes a review of a most unusual manga called Burning Becky. The comic’s style is heavily based on American super hero comics, right down to the cover with a logo in the upper left corner as well as English sound effects and the very fact that it’s a manga about a super hero. Tamagomago himself wrote the post as if he were an American speaking Japanese. This one isn’t so easy to read so I’ll provide a little sample. I had planned on translating the entire article here for English-speaking readers to enjoy, but that hasn’t happened. At least not yet.

アメコミのいいところの一つは、ダイナミックで豪快な、まるでイラストレーションのような描写力があるかな？少ないページ数にたくさんのキャラクターが出てくるために洗練された方法かもしれないね。もちろん、それは作家さん次第なので、全部ではないよ。

One of the good points about American Comics is that they’re so dynamic and exciting, one might say that they’re practically illustrations in their descriptive power. This is likely the result of  refining techniques for the sake of including so many characters on so few pages. Of course that’s dependent on the individual artist and so it’s not universal.

Let’s Over-Analyze the Subspace Emissary

Posted on by

This post is really, really late, seeing as how Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been out for a long time now, but I was thinking about the story mode recently and my theories on it back when the game first came out. As such, I want to record them here for all of you.

Warning, spoilers follow.

The basic plot of the “Subspace Emissary,” or the story mode in Smash Bros. Brawl, is that a mysterious being called the Ancient Minister is detonating Subspace Bombs and destroying parts of the Smash Bros. universe for some diabolical scheme. We later learn that the Ancient Minister is actually the Robot Operating Buddy that was originally released with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and that R.O.B. is being controlled by Master Hand, a gigantic disembodied right hand that is like a “god” of sorts. However, it also turns out that Master Hand is being controlled by a being who rules Subspace named Tabuu, who is also the ultimate opponent in Subspace Emissary.

Looking back at the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, the game’s cinematic opening implies to us the true identity of Master Hand (and by extension the left “Crazy Hand” from Melee on). Master Hand’s domain is a room which contains a desk, a chair, and a toy chest from which he pulls out dolls of his favorite Nintendo characters. In other words, Master Hand is a kid who is just having fun with his toys and his video games, and that is why he is the default final boss in the series.

Who is Tabuu, then? Well, he is a being more powerful than Master Hand, who controls and restrains Master Hand against the hand’s will. He is capable of attacking with “Off Waves,” which renders the Nintendo (and Sega and Konami) heroes lifeless. He is described in the game as “having been born in a vastly foreign realm” and also “possess[ing] great leadership powers.” If you look more closely, you will see that the true identity of Tabuu is Master Hand’s father, or specifically the father of the kid playing with his video game toys. He rules subspace as a great leader and he is capable of turning “off” the child’s games.

The greatest evidence towards Tabuu being a child’s imaginary representation of his dad comes in the form of R.O.B. Prior to the start of the Subspace Emissary, Tabuu attacks R.O.B. and forces it and its loyal followers to do his bidding or risk further destruction. Why is R.O.B. of all characters the titular subspace emissary? Why is he the border between the Smash world and Subspace? If you look at what R.O.B. actually is, then the answer becomes clear.

R.O.B. was originally released as a toy to go along with the NES to play R.O.B.-specific games, and was instrumental in tricking convincing parents to buy a video game entertainment system for their kids. R.O.B., to those parents and even some kids, was the most visible part of the NES. More importantly, R.O.B. in his original games exists as both a character on-screen and as a physical object in the real world, making R.O.B.s the ideal messengers between Subspace (the real world) and the Smash world (video games and imagination).

So in actuality, the “Subspace Emissary” is an allegory for a father telling his child to stop playing with toys because they have to go do something away from the realm of video games and fun, like go visit grandma. The child, i.e. “Master Hand,” is thus captured by the evil “Tabuu,” who seeks to turn everything “off” and control everything. The father destroys and enslaves the R.O.B.s first because they are the easiest targets and the only ones to truly be both physical and imaginary. The child/Master Hand in turn must be saved by his own creations, the characters of Smash Bros. Whether the “defeat” of “Tabuu” happened in reality or purely in the mind of the child is sadly unknown.

Miyamoto Shigeru Agrees with Me

Posted on by

I previously made a post positing that one of the big changes that occurred in video game graphics around the NES era was that character’s began to have faces. Their eyes and mouths (or approximations thereof) made the characters more relatable.

While I thought it made perfect sense, I realize that aside from my visual analysis there wasn’t a whole lot of record and evidence to back it up. But then recently while reading the New Super Mario Bros. Wii interview, the creator of Mario himself Miyamoto Shigeru said something which helped support my theory immensely.

Iwata
Mario’s trademarks are his moustache, his hat and his overalls. Why did you decide to give him this look? I have no doubt you’ve spoken about this many times before, but I’d like to take this opportunity to ask you to tell us about it one more time.

Miyamoto
Certainly. The original Mario was a 16 X 16 pixilated image. At that time, when games made overseas used human characters, they were always rendered with life-like proportions.

Iwata
It felt as if the developers weren’t happy unless they’d drawn a figure that was eight-heads tall.

Miyamoto
Or sometimes it would be six-heads tall. But actually, the number of pixels we were able to use was so limited that, if we did that, we’d only have had a couple of pixels for the face.

Iwata
With two pixels, you wouldn’t even have been able to draw eyes. You’d basically have ended up with a matchstick figure. In early video games from overseas, that kind of figure often featured.

Miyamoto
And as they just didn’t resemble human figures, I was absolutely convinced that they’d been designed by people who couldn’t draw!

Iwata
(laughs)

Miyamoto
I thought it was most likely that it was the programmer who was drawing these figures. But I thought: “I know how to draw!” I mean, I’m not saying I can draw as well as an artist, but I was confident that I was better at drawing than a programmer. That’s why I started by saying: “Right, let’s draw something that actually looks like a person’s face!” So I drew the eyes, the nose, the mouth and…
Miyamoto goes on to talk about how in creating the face, it left him with very few pixels to actually design a body, and that Mario’s look was essentially dictated by function (Mario has a mustache so that they didn’t have to draw a mouth). What’s important in Miyamoto’s words is that he saw how most of the characters in games abroad were attempts to replicate a “realistic” human figure, and he still made an effort to give his character Mario some semblance of a personality by giving him facial features, even if those features were the result of limitations.
Certainly it wasn’t impossible or uncommon for games prior to Donkey Kong to have personality of their own, and Miyamoto certainly wasn’t the first to give facial features to his characters (Pac-Man being the most obvious example), it does show the kind of thinking that would go on to implicitly influence generations of gamers.

Like Casting Pearls Before Artificial Intelligence

Posted on by

If you’ll allow me a moment, I am going to rant about them there video games.

I’ve been playing Jump Ultimate Stars recently, trying to finally unlock all the characters and such, and in order to do so you need to collect these gems that appear when you break open containers or you defeat enemies. A simple, if tedious process, gem collection is made five times worse when you find out that your computer opponents collect the gems as well.

Now keep in mind that unlike other items which might cause status effects or buffs/de-buffs, the gems serve no function other than as currency, and so serve no use to the computer opponents who will occasionally go out of their way to collect them. It just slows down the grinding process unnecessarily and can make you want to punch Yugi in the face when he grabs your damn knowledge gem for the umpteenth time. Fortunately with this game you can do exactly that.

If you’ve played Super Smash Bros. Brawl, then you probably know what I’m talking about. In Brawl, you get additional background music by collecting CDs which will randomly pop up in the middle of a fight. Again, if a computer-controlled opponent picks that CD up it means that you’re going to have to wait another day for that disc to reappear.

Why, Nintendo? Why, Ganbarion? Why put this into your games? It just leads to annoyance and frustration, and not the good kind either.

Oh yeah, if you do reply, please don’t turn this into an argument about tripping or whatever.

From Mew to Arceus: A Discussion of Rare Pokemon Events and Beyond

Posted on by

The Pokemon Who is Also God is available at Toys “R” Us until November 15 this week, and I don’t know about you guys but I am totally gonna get me some divine Pockets Monster and then not use it at all because I haven’t actually played the game in forever. Nobie’s been out of the Pokemon gig for a while now.

As a result of the Arceus giveaway I’ve been thinking a lot about Pokemon as of late, and so if you’ll forgive me I’m going to ramble on while trying to touch on a number of points that I want to discuss.

Arceus is not the first rare pokemon I’ve obtained. I’ve gotten Darkrai and Deoxys through Toys “R” Us and Game Stop by bringing in my DS with my Pokemon Diamond and using Mystery Gift to get eggs from that one shop. However, I also went to the Pokemon Center back when it wasn’t called Nintendo World, and I was even there to get my official Mew for my Generation-1 Pokemon games, as well as at Six Flags to get my Celebi years later. I’ve been at this for a while.

The biggest difference between then and now, is that with the way event Pokemon get sent to you through the Mystery Gift function, you can totally get your Arceus without anyone noticing or wondering why you’re even there. This was not the case with getting that original Mew. You had to stand in a line with your game cartridge in hand while next to people of all ages (mostly kids, obviously) talking about Pokemon, and then you had give it to the Nintendo official who was wearing a bright Pokemon shirt so that they could use a machine to give you your Mew. In other words, there was no way to disguise the fact that you were a Pokemon fan. You had to accept it in order to get your Mew, or you were out of luck. Or you could just Gameshark it, but that’s another issue entirely.

I’m the kind of person who was never afraid to tell people I was into Pokemon, and keep in mind that I was into Pokemon starting in high school, so I was well beyond the target age. So what I liked about the Mew event was that you had to proudly show that you were a Pokemon fan, and while I can definitely say that the current way of obtaining event Pokemon is a lot more convenient for everyone, I do end up missing that aspect of camaraderie where you couldn’t hide in shame. And I’ve known people like that online and off, who were afraid to tell other people they were fans of Pokemon. They in many ways helped to inform my posts about having confidence in yourself as a fan of anime and such. It’s something I want people to come to terms with, no matter who they are.

Going back to the whole “people of all ages” thing, it’s really amazing how Pokemon is able to attract such a wide age group, and it’s a testament to the effectiveness of the game design and the supporting material. The game is easily playable by children 4 and under, and yet the battle system is one of the most robust and entertaining vs modes you will ever find in a video game. With currently almost 500 Pokemon available, 17 types, tons of attacks and items and more, it creates this intricate web of decisions and actions that you have to consider in order to make an effective Pokemon team. If it wasn’t obvious before, I’ll say it now: I love the strategy in Pokemon. Love, love, love it. It’s one of my favorite games of all time as a result, where I focus my efforts on trying to make Pokemon with lesser stats and abilities viable in competitive play while still maintaining what makes them unique. I’ve been a part of Azure Heights, Pokemon Daily, I used the Pokemon Battle Simulator, GSBots, Netbattle, Shoddy, and I even wrote some of the strategy sections on Smogon for some of the lesser-used Pokemon such as Noctowl and Sableye (though they are out of date), and was one of the first to suggest Yawn + U-Turn on Uxie. The only reason I don’t play it more now is that I know how easily it can draw me in.

And the best part is, if you don’t want to be a part of this insane world, you can ride on back to Pokemon just being about going out on adventures with your Pokemon friends and trading and having fun and ignoring all the number crunching that goes on. But if you do choose to stay? Why, there’s a whole plethora of options available to you. You can make a team according to your personality and what you think is important in a game, and you can still be competitive.

I know it can be a very daunting task to try to get into Pokemon multiplayer seeing as how there’s so much information. You’re supposed to memorize the fact that Steel is only weak to Ground, Fire, and Fighting, while also knowing that Ursaring has a very high attack stat. You’re supposed to at the very least know all 17 Pokemon types and most of the Pokemon out there. It’s a lot to commit to memory. But do you know who does commit it to memory? Kids. And they don’t do it by first going, “OKAY, I, GEORGE PEEPANTS, AM GOING TO BE A COMPETITIVE PLAYER.” No, they just absorb all of the media naturally. They learn everything about Pokemon because they love Pokemon, and that’s the true beauty of the Pokemon concept.

I know some people are of the belief that games shouldn’t require you to learn so much before you get to play. To that I say, first off you don’t actually need to know all this stuff to start playing against other people, it just increases your chances of winning. Secondly, I think you are rewarded much more richly for understanding the Pokemon system first. Sure, Pokemon is glorified Rock-Paper-Scissors (and Yu-Gi-Oh is glorified War, but that’s another topic for another day), but it’s that glorification that makes it the solid game that it is, and the complexity of the type chart is not something which people “just know.” And if you want to learn, just do what the kids do, and play.

Wow, are you still with me? In that case, let me share one of my favorite Pokemon to use with you. It’s designed primarily to annoy people who hate it when luck influences a match. I won’t go into stat distributions and what-not, so you can have the opportunity to see what works for you.

Registeel @Leftovers
Substitute
Dynamicpunch
Zap Cannon
Explosion

Both Dynamicpunch and Zap Cannon have 50% accuracy, so you’re essentially fighting with coin flips, until you’ve had enough and you explode on somebody. Have fun with it, and watch as your opponents grow to hate you. You can use it in both the current generation and in the Advance line of games. If you want to apply it to Gold/Silver/Crystal, note that Ampharos can learn both Dynamicpunch and Zap Cannon.

So yeah, Pokemon.

Relating to NES Sprites

Posted on by

Whenever I say there’s something special about video game graphics during the NES/Master System era, some will believe that it’s simply due to nostalgia, while others will agree with me, but won’t be able to explain why. Sometimes those who agree with me will even chalk it up to nostalgia themselves. I however believe that there are concrete reasons as to why the level of graphics that the 8-bit systems achieved for home consoles holds such significance, and I’d like to discuss one of them here. I’m going to be using mainly NES graphics and not Master System ones, because 1) the NES was more popular and 2) the Master System actually had better graphics overall, and we want to look at the less-good.


From left to right: Berzerk, Robot from Berzerk, Circus


From left to right: Mario, Megaman, Karnov

What is the significant feature that the characters below all have in common that the characters above do not, aside from obvious graphical quality improvements?

Answer: They have faces.

This makes it easier to identify with them as characters, and gives them a sense of personality. In the NES era, the graphics were strong enough on the popular consoles to portray characters’ faces and to give them facial expressions, even if it’s the same expression all the time. This is important because we as humans tend to see ourselves in our surroundings. Scott McCloud talks about this a good deal in Understanding Comics, but it really is something fundamental. Two dots and and a line becomes a face. A semi-circle shape can be a smile or a frown depending on which way it’s facing. It allows players to identify with the characters.

While this does not take into account those games which feature primarily vehicles or objects inanimate objects, my focus is not so much on them, as I believe they have a somewhat similar appeal, only focused on their fantastical realism rather than their human quality.

Even those characters who practically had no eyes, noses, or mouths still benefited from the 8-bit graphical quality, as it allowed the games to clearly delineate an area of the body as the head.


From left to right: Simon Belmont, Bill Rizer, Ryu Hayabusa

This was especially useful in portraying characters with more human proportions as opposed to the big-headed cartoonish sprites from before, as it allowed the characters to seem realistic on the NES while again still giving them some sense of personality.

That is not to say that faces on sprites were a wholly unique experience to the 8-bit era. The NES and the Master System were not the first consoles to regularly portray characters with faces, with that honor probably going to the Colecovision in 1982. However, the difference here is a matter of timing, as 1983 was also the year of the North American Video Game Crash, and so in the minds of most people, graphics went from Atari to Nintendo, and if you look at the graphics of that era, they more often than not could barely differentiate a head from a neck, with one notable exception being Pitfall for the Atari 2600. Hey, it’s not all art and discovery.

The 8-Bit NES era was when graphics were good enough so that almost anyone who made a game for the console could give a sprite a face (and in essence, a personality), and thanks to good timing also was when video games were again popular enough to be a common feature in households. Graphics were certainly not the only factor in endearing the NES (and to a lesser extent the Master System) to young gamers, but as humans are visual creatures, graphics played a significant role in implanting the memories of these games into their minds.

Where Do Bosses Go to Post Job Openings?

Posted on by

kraidslist.org

(Yes the URL does exist, but the contents are nothing special)