Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright Announced

 

When I saw the news that Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright was announced by Level 5, I actually stepped away from my desk at work to text my brother the surprise news. Considering the fact that he’s a fan of Phoenix Wright and a huge fan of Professor Layton, this is a match made in heaven for him. I don’t have any numbers to prove it, but I think this is a dream game for a lot of people.

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Game Design Talk: The Controls of Little Big Planet

It’s been a while since I wrote about Little Big Planet. Since I wrote my initial impressions, I have played a bit of it, but for the most part, I’ve actively avoided it.

For a game that I liked so much to start, things went sour pretty quickly. As I continued to play through the game, it became readily apparent to me that the controls and character physics were not designed to handle this type of action.

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Looking Back: Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES

The Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter Alpha 2 confused many. While the Super Nintendo did have some fantastic Street Fighter ports in the past, many developers at the time (including Capcom) had already abandoned the Super Nintendo for the Playstation, Saturn and Nintendo 64. Capcom themselves had skipped porting Street Fighter Alpha to the Super Nintendo because the hardware couldn’t handle it.

So when this came out in 1996, it sparked a lot of questions. Why is this being ported to the Super Nintendo now? Do Super Nintendo players still want more Street Fighter? Is this port even any good?

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Tetris Attack is the Secret Best Tetris

Back in 1996, Nintendo released a North American version of their puzzle game, Panel de Pon. You may remember it as Tetris Attack. You may also recognize this game as Pokemon Puzzle League on the Nintendo 64 or Planet Puzzle League on the Nintendo DS. If you do, awesome.

It’s a shame that Tetris Attack/Puzzle League have never taken off in North America, because this series of puzzle games are, in my opinion, the best puzzle games that aren’t regular Tetris.

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Dance Central Full Track List Revealed

Yesterday, Harmonix announced the full track list for Dance Central. Despite my reluctance to buy a Kinect, this game is still very high on my most wanted list. Harmonix is one of my favourite developers and I’m really excited to try their take on the dancing game genre. If you’re wondering what tracks you’ll be shaking your booty to this holiday season, click through to the rest of this post.

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Pick Up Post: Just Dance 2

The first Just Dance was nothing short of a smash hit. It was a game that did a great job catering to the Wii audience, in spite of the gripes I had from a hardcore gamer perspective; which wouldn’t matter to the vast majority of people who would play or buy this game in the first place. To be fair, once I stopped thinking about the game as a hardcore game reviewer and started thinking about it as just someone wanting to play a dance game with others, the original was a lot of fun.

Yesterday evening, my girlfriend went to pick up her copy of Just Dance 2, which might be her most anticipated game of the year. After a long weekend of Just Dance 1 madness with her, my brother, my cousins and I, my brother and I decided to go half on our own copy as well.

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Thoughts About the Upcoming Mortal Kombat Game

I haven’t liked a Mortal Kombat game for a long time. I enjoyed the first one, thought the second one was the best and that the third one was a bit of a letdown. From there, I lost interest in the series when it shifted to 3D, added weapons and any other gimmicky stuff to keep the series fresh. To be fair, the Mortal Kombat games have always sold well, but the series hasn’t been relevant among hardcore fighting game fans or the mass audience in years.

Thankfully, the developers behind Mortal Kombat seem to be going the Street Fighter IV route by going back to what made the game great in the first place.

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Late to the Party: Street Fighter Alpha

Street Fighter Alpha is a landmark game in my life as a fighting game player. This was the first fighting game that I completely missed in its prime during my 14 year run without fighting games. I didn’t plan on missing out on this game; I actively purchased video game magazines to read Street Fighter Alpha coverage. However, it came out during a time when I wasn’t going to the arcade and I didn’t own a system that could run Alpha at home, so I never played more than 20 minutes of it at someones house years after the fact.

This was the first game I picked up on Playstation Network after buying my Playstation 3. Even though I have other fighting games to attend to, I really wanted to go back and give this one a fair shake to see what I’ve missed out on after all these years.

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The Undisputed Worst Video Game of All-Time – E.T. The Extraterrestrial

I’ve run this video game website way too long without any mention of E.T. the Extraterrestrial. For all the wrong reasons, this game is legendary. If you don’t already know what makes this game special, there are no shortage of resources you can check out to catch up on the story.

I’m not here to regurgitate that story or tell you how E.T. the Extraterrestrial almost killed the entire home video game market. As a proud owner of this game, I just wanted to share my experiences with it.

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Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me – Why I’m Reluctant to Join the Call of Duty: Black Ops Hype Train

Call of Duty: Black Ops is set for release in the next few weeks and based on the pre-order numbers alone it’s almost certain to be a monsterous success. Could it outsell the Infinity Ward developed Modern Warfare 2? It wouldn’t necessarily be out of the realm of possibility.

Will I be jumping in on day one, contributing to its success? Ha. I really enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, but that game was awesome thanks to the developers at Infinity Ward (before 1/3rd of the company bailed). Call of Duty: Black Ops is being made by Treyarch, who made Call of Duty: World at War, which I was less than impressed by.
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