Your retro game headquarters
I will always have a soft spot for Side Arms. Anyone that owned one during its time will remember how lonely it was to be a Turbo Grafx fan. While Sega and Nintendo fans traded games left and right you were luck to find a single person who had even heard of the system. A […]
I pride myself on being a well-informed gamer. Back in the days when everyone relied on the back of the box for their purchases I devoured any gaming magazine I could get my hands on to learn about new releases. It’s helped me avoid some truly horrendous stinkers over the years. But it also robs […]
Shinobi was one of the most popular arcade games of the 80s. Ninjas were all the rage and Sega were quick to capitalize on that with this massive arcade hit. As great as it was in the arcade many anticipated a home port rather than spending a king’s ransom on the arcade game. And unfortunately […]
In the US the Turbo Grafx-16 had a limited library. While it had a few titles in every genre no one could deny that it had an abundance of shooters. And with good reason; the system almost seemed catered to the genre. You could argue that the system did not need another one. But when […]
I have played many difficult games in my time as a gamer. But few have ever made me as angry as Rayxanber II. I can appreciate a decent challenge when it is balanced well. For all of the bluster surrounding Dark Souls the games are totally fair once you learn their mechanics. But Rayxanber II […]
I’ve always been interested in the Shubibinman series since seeing import screenshots in EGM. The early days of the Turbo Grafx held a lot of promise before reality came crushing down and Shubibinman seemed like the system’s answer to Mega Man. Ironically the second game, which leaned even more into that comparison, was the only […]
It’s not easy being a fan of a failing system. By 1993 I knew it was over for the Turbo Grafx-16 even in spite of the Turbo Duo’s release. But some small part of me was still rooting for the system. But as game after game stayed in Japan such as Rondo of Blood and […]
Next to shooters and platformers no other genre was as oversaturated in the 90s as the side-scrolling beat em up. Once Final Fight ignited the genre every developer was off to the races copying Capcom’s formula. But where shooters had diversity in terms of setting and mechanics everyone was content aping Capcom’s game. Between the […]
Image Fight was a shooter that I did not have a high opinion of. My only prior exposure to the game came from the lackluster NES port which sadly lacked what made it great. The PC Engine version of Image Fight is an excellent port of a great game and one that provides an ample […]
Aero Blasters was one of the first Turbo Grafx-16 games I ever played. After the disappointment of Keith Courage it helped to give me a favorable impression of the system. It also helped that the game was awesome. Coming off of NES shooters that more or less made the system tap out it was nice […]