Despair: Castelvania Comes to HD

This isn’t exactly what I had in mind¹ for a 2D, HD, Castlevania, but it might be good…right?:

---

^{1 I guess it was too much to hope that they’d just do something kinda normal, i.e. not some bizarre, MP-focused, game, but HD owners just gotta have online MP, even if it makes little sense, right?! (Yes, I was hoping/praying for another SOTN or Drac X or, gasp, even another CVIII.)}

3PM Snapshot: Alucard Rising

It’s Almost Like 3rd Parties are Taking a Nintendo Machine Seriously

SPLINTER CELL

SUPER STREET FIGHTER 4

RESIDENT EVIL

DEAD OR ALIVE

METAL GEAR SOLID

Next up:dogs and cats living together. News at 11!

More here.

(Note: no doubt most (all?) of these are pure mock-ups, i.e. not actually representative of anything from an actual game.)

Too Hard Corps For the Gaming Media??

Contra popular belief, nobody cares about Contra

Why is Eurogamer the only outfit even mentioning the Contra game for XBLA and PSN??:

Developed by Arc System Works, Hard Corps features eight levels and anime-style visuals, and is built around the Contra series’ famously rock-hard side-scrolling shooter gameplay.

Some power-ups and vehicles should be familiar to fans of the series, and there’s also a special Rising Mode for newcomers, in which you can take three bullets before dying rather than the usual one.

And then I checked the comments…eight of them. This story has been up for 9 hours or so and has a total of eight comments. Anyone know a good cure for old school gamer despair??

The King of Famicom: Go Team Irem, Go!

2010: Hensyu-Douga MC presents–in association with Nintendo/Capcom/Konami/Namco/Irem/Hudson/Taito/Sunsoft–a fighting mash-up for the ages:

I’d buy it. Twice. Because I’m (mostly) blinded by nostalgia, not because it actually looks like a helluva lot of fun.¹

---

^{1 It does look like a helluva lot of fun.}

Old School? More Like Pre-School

This is a ‘game’ (barely) from one of those Heathkit¹ jobbies I’ve mentioned once or, well, once:

Kinda reminds me of a super-primitive Scramble (or Cosmic Avenger which, I think, was also a Scramble knock-off), a game I had actually enjoyed from the same, forgotten, era, when men were men, computers were monochrome and there was a very good reason why arcades dominated the gaming scene: they could actually scroll w/o incurring seizures and their audio output didn’t sound like cat claws (cat attached) raked across a chalk board.

And, actually, I’m pretty sure Y-Wing 2² was ripping Scramble off while also getting in a two-fer w/ Star Wars:

---

1 If you’d like, you can emulate this thing if you’d like to risk infertility after bathing in its sickly-green glow…and, if you’d like, you probably should be infertile, so everybody wins.)
2 Oh, and yeah: as there’s a Y-Wing 2 there was also a Y-Wing 1.

Revived: Dracula Menaces Castlevania III Once More

This is, as yet, merely a demo for something that will, hopefully, yet see the blinding light of dawn, but it is a very good one:

You can stake out the demo here.

h/t: Pixel Prospector

Nocturnal Castlevania Piano Arrangment

From Symphony of the Night, the haunting strains of Moonlight Nocturne, arranged for piano:

And the original:

He has other piano arrangements of VG tunes here.

Sparks(ter) Will Fly May 12th

Yeah, you wish it looked this good

Rocket Knight returns soon for $15 on 360, PS3 and PC (the lack of a Wii version seems to be a very, very odd omission for this game in particular):

In Rocket Knight, players assume the role of Sparkster, a heroic opossum who returns home to the Kingdom of Zephyrus after 15 years only to discover that wolves have attacked his homeland. Rocket Knight introduces expansive new worlds to the franchise, with massive platform levels as well as rocket-flying levels. Using their wits and a trusty rocket pack, players must overcome the hostile wolf army aiming to attack Sparkster’s beloved kingdom.

Sounds lovely–here’s hoping they didn’t completely f*ck it up, though the kinda lifeless, puppet-like¹, graphics built on Platform Game Designer Pro MAX^TM don’t inspire hope in the early going (and, man, the music–do NOT screw up the music, Climax!):

And here’s some video for those of you that have been in hibernation for the past six months (which continues to not inspire):

---

1 Where are my sprites and parallax, damn you!

Jesus Christ: The Son of Man Becomes The Son of Slam

If you’re going to do ‘edgy’¹, you can do better than the KKK and Satan

I won’t hold my breath waiting for the version w/ Mohammad smiting infidels and apostates as that’s a good way to invite death threats, but this is sorta-kinda reminiscent of a chunky, Konami, beat ‘em up. (If the creators had any balls–and actually wanted a really big audience–this game could be super-fun and not in a ‘crucifix in urine’ sorta way.)

I’m fairly certain CHI would approve of the lamb-into-wood-wielding-lion’s hands-on approach to sin. Hell (oops), maybe even the Knight, too.

And in other news, there’s also this: “New God game is Silent Hill for browsers, basically” which sounds…weird, but slickly-produced.

---

1 It’s funny how often ‘edgy’ is tired, trite and clichéd, isn’t it? Kinda like the exact opposite of edgy, in fact.