SNES

Space Bazooka Expanding on everything that made Battle Clash great, Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge is a sequel in everything but name. I have no idea why. It’s not that Battle Clash is a great name, but changing the brand and then attaching a subtitle makes it sound unrelated. I guess we should be happy that they didn’t change over to the Japanese nomenclature for Battle Clash. They called it Space Bazooka. That’s just what I’d call the Super Scope if I was trying to make fun of it. If you didn’t read my article last…

Buffet of games There wasn’t exactly a buffet of games for Nintendo’s Super Scope. It was only supported from ‘92 until ‘94, receiving 14 titles if you’re being generous and 12 titles if you’re being slightly less generous. Of them, a lot are missable. The one that usually comes to mind for anyone not intimately familiar with the shoulder rod is Yoshi’s Safari, but those in the know are aware of Battle Clash and its sequel Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge. Both games were developed by Intelligent Systems exclusively for…

Storm on the horizon While the N64 was still drinking backstage, preparing itself to stagger out and trip over the drummer, I was drooling over screenshots in various magazines. The game I was most excited about in the lead-up to launch was Pilotwings 64. Listen, I know that’s not everybody’s favorite game, but this was the first time I saw big, explorable worlds in a video game. I thought every game was one day going to be like that, before someone decided that the only way for a world to be worthwhile is if it was…

10 games were too few for this super library I’ve made it clear by now that ranking games in a franchise or a system’s library is not easy. Even if these rankings are subjective, deciding which games are “best” wracks my brain for hours before I finish a rough draft. This is why I do not say lightly that all my lists to this point pale in comparison to the difficulty of ranking the best SNES games. Lord Spencer elegantly described my 10 best Mario games list as “a list of nines rolling into tens.” As I jotted down my…

Best books about video games (Image: BITMAP) This article contains affiliate links, we may receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more With a bookshelf packed full of gaming magazines, game guides and chunky hardbacks dedicated to the video game industry, it's starting to feel like I spend more time reading about my favourite hobby instead of actually playing anything. Whether you want to know more about how your favourite games were made, or some recommendations about what to play next, the…

It starts… My husband was determined that I take on The Lion King. It had to be the Sega Genesis version. I feel like this is almost a shared experience. I played it in my youth, and it didn’t really leave any sort of bad impression. The sprites and backgrounds were done by Disney’s animation studio, and the whole thing looks like a big-budget endeavor. It’s hard to believe how relentlessly awful it actually is. During my last experience with it, I finally accomplished a childhood dream of making it to the part of the…

Fascism? Not in my city After writing about Final Fight 2 for the SNES, a few people suggested I look more into Final Fight 3. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I last played it. Thinking about it, I was probably just out of college when I last went through it with a roommate. It has at least been long enough that I forgot about the enemies that are literally Nazis. Stahlhelm, stielhandgranate, the name “Fritz.” Guys are Wehrmacht as all get out. So now I get to see Mike Haggar pile-drive Nazis into the pavement, and…

Vote Haggar In the debate between 1989’s Final Fight and 1991’s Streets of Rage, I’m in the latter camp. Don’t get me wrong, I love Final Fight and understand that Streets of Rage was just Sega’s answer to Capcom porting their seminal brawler to the SNES. I also realize that Streets of Rage is a blatant rip-off of Final Fight. However, I just love the sense of style and the fact that it’s better suited to consoles. However, Streets of Rage doesn’t have Mike Haggar, former pro-wrestler and beloved mayor of Metro City.…

Yesterday, Apple released updates for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. As part of these updates, these devices now support classic Nintendo game controllers designed for Nintendo Switch. This new support includes the wireless N64 controller and the SNES game controller. It's likely that the Sega Genesis controller and the NES controller are also compatible, but this has not been confirmed as of yet. The specific words used for the macOS Ventura and iPadOS 16 update state, “many additional Bluetooth and USB game…

Dr. Grant! The 1993 film Jurassic Park is fun for the whole family! It has dismemberment. It has people getting a face full of raptor. There’s Jeff Goldblum! There are kids in it, allowing the little buggers to have some escapism in a horrific world of science gone wrong. It’s definitely not the most audience-confused license out there. Robocop had plenty of dick-shooting and melty-men, and everyone on the schoolyard talked about it. At least Robocop had a plot that lent itself well to video games. Jurassic Park was too…