By the Wayside

I have a number of valuable games in my collection. Some I acquired through lucky timing, others I’ve actually shelled out for, but all of them are the result of questionable priorities. None are as valuable as my copy of Little Samson. As…

Ah, Star Wars Arcade. No, not that Star Wars Arcade game. Not that one, either. I’m talking about the 1993 Star Wars Arcade created by Sega. Except I’m not. I’m talking about the 1994 port for the Sega 32X. Ah, the Sega 32X. I own more…

Growing up, I played a lot of puzzle games, but I didn’t have much love for them. This is because my mother loves puzzle games, and I probably didn’t like them much because it was one of the genres she could beat me at. However, the…

Umihara Kawase is a weird game to explain, but I’m going to try to anyway. It looks and sounds like an amateur production put out by some unknown publisher and created by some unknown developer, and maybe it is. But it’s also one of the…

It’s pretty easy to stand out in the Virtual Boy catalog. There were only fourteen games. Half weren’t very good, half felt like tech demos, and half were Virtual Boy Wario Ware. If a game didn’t fit into any of those three halves, it…

As with El Viento, I hadn’t heard of Sol-Deace before Retro-Bit’s reproduction of it was announced. However, it’s a good partner since, like El Viento, it was developed by Wolf Team. Sol-Deace has something of a confusing history. It was…

I really hadn’t heard of El Viento before Retro-Bit announced their re-issue of it. It’s really hard to know what to make of it. It seems displaced from time, occupying an era that doesn’t exist. That may be a weird way to describe it, but…

The Hammerin’ Harry/Daiku no Gen-San series continued from 1990 to the last game, Hammerin’ Hero, in 2009. However, only the first game was released in arcades. After the original Hammerin’ Harry, the series shifted entirely to home…

I have really been looking forward to Retro-Bit’s NES reissue of 1991’s Hammerin’ Harry. However, in retrospect, this is partially due to me getting it confused with Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade game in Taito’s single-screen format. If I…

When talking about SNEG’s efforts to re-release Strategy Simulation Inc.’s old PC catalog, I mentioned that one of their most significant endeavors was putting SSI’s D&D games back on storefronts. I bought them some time ago. I haven’t…