Games I Beat In 2014 #51-60: August-October

Below are the first few words of each entry in the sixth batch of Games I Beat In 2014. Note that I beat the first two games in August, even though the entries weren’t written until September. A whopping 7 of the 10 entries were games I beat for the first time, and I had never even played Sequence before this series.

#51: Mega Man 3

Whatever you want to say about Capcom’s current state of disarray–and from what I hear, they’re pretty much being kept alive at the moment by Super Ultra Mega Street Fighter IV Championship Edition Turbo Calamity Burst A-Spec For Answer–Mega Man is a gaming institution. Through what seems like a million games, the Blue Bomber has …

#52 (#23 NEW!): Blaster Master

Tanks are cool. Frogs are pretty cool too. Radioactivity? Less cool, although I guess getting bitten by a radioactive animal and acquiring the abilities of said animal can be pretty neat. Underground caves? Yeah, you guessed it, cool. Put ’em together and what have you got? No, not bibbity-babbity-boo, it’s today’s Game I Beat In …

#53 (#24 NEW!): 3-D Worldrunner

3-D is something of a cyclical technology. The most recent wave of “3-D Mania” swept movie theaters a few years ago, but before that, a cruder form of it was big in the 80s (And before that, it was also a huge part of US cinema in the 50s). This extended to video games, and …

#54 (#25 NEW!): Pilotwings

In late 1991, Nintendo brought its 16-bit system, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, to the US. And they were keen on showing off the things the new hardware could do. One of its hardware modes, Mode 7, became a major marketing point. In short, Mode 7 was a way to more easily do scaling and …

#55 (#26 NEW!): Snake Rattle ‘N Roll

In the NES era, Rare were best known for Battletoads, which put them on the map as a top-tier game developer, and has a reputation as being one of the hardest games in history. The truth is that Battletoads was one of the easier games they released on the NES. I can name, off the …

#56 (#27 NEW!): Sequence

I was big into Dance Dance Revolution and other games of its ilk in the mid-to-late 2000s–the subtitle for this site still mentions “smashing arrows”, and I made an attempt at a metal song called “Arrowsmash”. I’ve also loved RPGs since playing the original Dragon Warrior on the NES when I was about 6. On …

#57 (#28 NEW!): Kid Icarus

The very first entry in this series was the original Metroid, which invented a genre and is regarded as a video game classic, even if it hasn’t aged well. What you may not know is that another game was developed using the same engine as Metroid. While that game was well-received in its day, it …

#58 (#29 NEW!): Ecco the Dolphin

Growing up, I was firmly on Team Nintendo in the Great SNES Vs. Genesis Debate. I did acquire a Genesis one Christmas near the end of its lifespan. While this meant I never got to play some Genesis classics–Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Phantasy Star II and IV–until after the fact, the SNES had plenty of …

#59: Final Fight (Arcade)

Video games are, in some ways, wish fulfillment. One particular type of wish fulfillment is that of the politician who, instead of using things such as “laws” and “procedures” to reduce crime, takes to the streets to piledrive and suplex thugs into behaving. It’s amazing how many movies feature a premise that’s little more than …

#60: Dynasty Warriors 3

I know very little about the Three Kingdoms era of China. I know that there were three kingdoms, and that after about 100 years, they were united as one kingdom. Thanks to today’s Game I Beat In 2014, I also know that during this time of turmoil, numerous battles were fought by men whose names …