Living the High Life

Video Game Diary:

Like always, I've been playing some new stuff and old stuff!

The new stuff:

Big Brain Acadamy for the Wii is awesome I own Brain Age but never played the DS version of this game so it was a new experience for me. The games test your skill in different areas like memory and visualizing and tracks your mental progress. You can play with up to eight players, compare results with everyone else in your home and even send your student report to your Wii friends via Wii Connect 24 so they can try to best your scores. It's a great game that I am going to buy for sure.

Indigo Prophecy is now on the plate and I am completing it with Evan and company. Indigo is an interactive story and the action is played out through simon-like, follow-me dual analog stick patterns. These sequences are there simply to move the story forward which is by far the highlight of the game. The conversation system and cinematography is amazing and even emotional or tense at times.

I also played through some of the Disaster Report scenarios that I skipped the first time through and finally ordered the sequel Raw Danger.

In the midst of the adventuring however there was a strange energy that compelled me to move into the classic console room and play the Genesis, which I had neglected for quite some time.
Lets move on to the good stuff, the old stuff:

First I played Trampoline Terror created in 1990 by Toy Soldiers Inc. In this game the player traverses a giant grid filled with enemies, trampolines and detonators. The goal is to trigger all detonators by walking over them. Bonuses are scored for destroying colored detonators in order. The enemies can be blow-up in the explosions or killed by throwing a device across the trampolines like a skipping stone. Hopping on the trampolines can allow you to jump to hard to reach areas but jumping on one too many times makes it pop. The grid is miles high so falling through a trampoline or falling off an edge kills you.

Greatest Heavyweights by SegaSports 1993. Great graphics and sound were present but the gameplay was missing. I tried lots of strategies and buttons (it supported the 6-button controller), but still I ended up as a punching bag. The fighters available are champions from different time periods (which is a cool concept - ed) and you can taunt your opponent. As Jack Dempsey, I yelled "I'm gonna crush your skull." to which Evander Holyfield replied "You can't touch me!".

GODS released in 1992 and developed by Bitmap Bros. is a side-scroller action adventure orginally on Amiga and Atari ST computers. Throw projectile weapons to kill the beasts inside a dungeon with traps and treasure. Each area has hints that tell you how to escape to the next area. In my opinion, the respawning enemies actionized what could have been a good exploration game. That said, it was very 1990's funny.

The final test of skill was Deadly Moves by Kaneko and licensed by Sega for the Genesis in 1992. This 2D brawler, a genre that I sorely miss, had a punch, kick, and jump button and few special moves. It also moved a little too slowly and the characters were unimaginative. The main character, Joe, is best described as a skinny Ryu with black pants and blue wristbands. This game was called Power Athelete in Japan (I like that better!) and Power Moves on the SNES. Many of the these games came out of the woodwork in the early 90s because of the massive popularity of the Street Fighter (and Mortal Kombat) series.

The Atari, NES and Playstation, as some of the most successful consoles in history, sometimes overshadow the Genesis. But this system represents the 16-bit era, Sega's greatest success as a hardware developer and a huge library of great games. It is, unmistakably, a milestone in video game history.

- Blake Leftwich, gamebot