How exactly do you update Space Harrier of all things for the PlayStation 2 age? It's too famous to take apart and then rebuild from the ground up in the way the 3D Ages team did with Monaco GP two volumes earlier, but at the same time the entirety of the 1985 classic's gameplay can be pretty accurately summed … Continue reading Sega Ages 2500 Vol.4: Space Harrier
Unlike Monaco GP, which took a truly old game even by my retro-leaning standards and then made an honest attempt to update its fast-paced formula while still staying true to the spirit of the original, this remake of Sega's System 16 arcade hit Fantasy Zone - the one that first caught everyone's attention in 1986 with … Continue reading Sega Ages 2500 Vol.3: Fantasy Zone
I promise I won't make a habit of this, but I would like to say it one more time just so I know we're all clear: Sega Ages 2500 began as a budget series on both sides of the publisher/consumer divide - nostalgic experiences intended to be cheap(ish) to make and cheap(ish) to buy. Monaco GP and roughly the … Continue reading Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol.2: Monaco GP
The House of the Dead 2 is fondly remembered for many reasons: Its incredible gameplay, its abundance of enjoyably gruesome enemies, its complex route system bursting with secrets... and its cheesy dialogue, spoken cheesily by cheesy characters. Today I am going to defend that giant block of gaming Cheddar, and I'm not going to fall back … Continue reading Suffer, like G did!
I'll be honest with you: I wasn't particularly looking forward to going through this one. Beyond having been Sakura'd as well as War'd up to my eyeballs by this point in my research the game seems to be a title that for English-speaking Dreamcast fans exists as a name and not much else on a … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Ogami Ichirou Funtouki
Hailing from all over the world and aged anywhere between literal children and highly experienced adults, Sakura Wars' main cast have always been a diverse, interesting, and argumentative bunch. They're all created with a marketable stereotype in mind - the cute one, the sexy one, the serious one - that the stories they inhabit then … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: The Flower Division
A Dreamcast "Dramatic Community" release with "Online" in its title sounds about as useful in 2022 as a themed email program that will only show its personalised messages to recipients viewing them through their own copy of the same disc, but Sakura Wars Online (the version shown here is the "Teito Edition", and is fully … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Sakura Wars Online
Another day, another Sakura Wars fan disc set. This two disc release was the last of the Saturn offerings, and unlike the ones that came before it Teigeki Graph in Sakura Wars is packed with new content and an easy recommendation for any fan of the series, whether they have a back tattoo of the full … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Teigeki Graph in Sakura Wars
It would not be untrue to say the battles found in the first two Sakura Wars games could be described as simplistic and easy - so easy I genuinely couldn't tell you even after all these years what happens when you lose a fight - but to leave it there would miss the purpose of … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Battle Part
You would expect this 2003 PlayStation 2 release of the first Sakura Wars to be a straight transfer of the PC version of the game (which is in itself a nigh-identical to the Dreamcast por- actually, we'd probably call that version a "remaster" these days): The game was already popular, the existing ports were already … Continue reading Sakura Wars Corner: Sakura Wars vs Atsuki Chishio Ni
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster 