RetroRaided

> Batman for the OG Gameboy is my all time favorite Gameboy game. Brought to us by Sunsoft, it sits in good company with alot of the early Gameboy games. It was with the GB Color and the Wii systems that Nintendo would become synonomous with shovelware and lots of crappy games, the early years on the GB were full of great content. I also think I was lucky to have a brother, four years my senior, who had good taste in games. For whatever reason there have been alot of good Batman games over the years from Batman Returns for the Game Gear, to the Gunstar Heroes-ish The Adventures of Batman and Robin for the Genesis (best co-op game on the system and a personal favorite) and the mostly excellent Rocksteady Batman games. Batman has long been a bastion of quality. This game features unparrelled level design perfect for speed running, a great litle weapon system and variety in the form of horizontal shooter levels. Interesting Bosses and perfect enemy placement combined with a near perfe...

Viva la Vita I finally picked up the PlayStation Vita before I went on vacation last year and wow am I blown away by this little bad boy. The thing just kicks all kinds of ass. It fixes almost all of the PSP's short comings while offering the best on the go core gaming experience on the market. (although I'm sure the Switch will have something to say about that in the future) The Original model is just fantastic: Proper analog sticks, plus smaller, better buttons, a great D-pad, OLED wonderfulness, front and rear touchscreens. Amazing graphics and a good selection of games. Uncharted, Borderlands 2, Killzone, Unit 13, Jet Set Radio, The Unfinished Swan, Sly Cooper Theives in time, LittleBigPlanet, Rayman, Tearaway. Then there's the smaller, mostly 2D goodness: Fez, Risk of Rain, Super Meat Boy, Steam World Dig, Guacamelee, Velocity 2x, Soldner X 2, Sound Shapes, Bastion, Mutant Blobs Attack, Resogun and SHOVEL KNIGHT. God, Risk of Rain and Shovel Kinght are total revel...

                               Why is Vexx (for O.G. Xbox) a better game than Rayman 3? Well let's investigate shall we; about a year ago I bought both of these games at the same time on Ebay and Vexx happened to arrive a few days before Rayman.  Having liked the original and Rayman 2 I was looking foward to Rayman 3 more. My expectations for these two games were based on their reviews from my favorite magazine: Play(US) formerly Gamer's Republic. (well favorite until I discovered Retro Gamer anyway) The Review for Vexx was done by Dave Halverson known to long time readers as far to generous to crap games. He raved about it and awarded it a 4.5/5. While the review for Rayman 3 was done by Brady Feitcher, known to long time readers as a lover of FPS's, he gave R3 a B+ but it was clear from his review that he was disappointed by it and thought it was nowhere near as good as Rayman 2. I immediately ...

A Review for a modded Sega Saturn A modded Sega Saturn is a system that can play CD-Rs with ROMs burned onto them. I got one from someone advertising it on the net, He did it for around $65 ($24 of that was shipping it back and forth) the PCB board itself only cost $38 if you have a soldering gun and know how to use it. If you want to buy a Saturn and mod it, I would recommend buying some cheap games first as your unlikely to fork over cash for stuff when you can get it for free. Good sites to download from are emuparidise.com,(Best) doperoms (malware free but not a great selection) coolroms.com (full of spyware but good selection). I can't recommend doing this enough as too many of the best Saturn games are infuriatingly expensive, especially if you already have a Saturn but are missing out on classics like Radiant Silvergun, Soukygurentai, Guardian Heroes, Panzer Dragoon Saga and oh so many more. The prices for most of the best imports and complete domestic releases is fucki...

                                                              Motocross Maniacs (GB) Why is Motocross Maniac's for the humble little yellow and green wonder so fuckin good? Well for starters it plays like a Dr. Frankenstein mash up of racer and a platformer, it has great visuals with splendid animation that conveys just the right amount of kinetic motion (without a wasted pixel), it's freaking fun and it's pretty goddamn  long with 24 tracks of dirt bike chicanery . (oh and it's challenging too, providing extra hours of game play) Then you have the ability to select any track at anytime; making it perfect to pick up and play or put down, all day long. Then you have the power...

                                                       HaVen: Call of the King First let's begin by analyzing the, mostly awful, character design: We have the red headed main character sporting cornrows and a yo-yo as a weapon whose design is quite good (aside from the yo-yo as a weapon thing, which is frustratingly fiddly can't hit what you aim at, thoroughly lame, goddamn freaking yo-yo) and then there's every one else in the game. While the ancillary models are dreadful and strangely their super deformed while the two leads are proportional. These two, as well as the tinker owl, mark the high point of another example of appalling American character design, worthy of joining the infamous ranks of anything put out by...

What's Sonic Team's best game? Sonic 2, Nights, Sonic Adventure, Sonic heroes ? Sonic CD, OK it's definitely not Sonic CD. The definitive answer, for me,  is the GameCube's hidden gem: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. The GameCube game I played the most by far back when it came out, Billy Hatcher is wonderfully inventive and joyously playful with the only negative being the gratingly annoying sound design. These annoying sound effects were, unfortunately, symptomatic of Sega games at the time. Dashing, jump slamming, and throwing the giant eggs just hasn't gotten old. This game just makes me smile, zooming and swinging through the giant hoops, hatching rare items, slaloming around hazards, fighting baddies: this is Sonic Team humming at top gear. The graphics still look great especially the vibrant color palette. This is inventive, compelling and time tested gaming that may have disappeared from today's consoles but is not forgotten, not yet anyway. A- ...

Super Magnetic Neo (DC ) Why is Super Magnetic Neo my favorite game of all time? Well, for nostalgic reasons mostly: it was my favorite Dreamcast game and for a long time the Dreamcast was my favorite console. It is a 3D platformer and those are my favorite genre, it stands tall in a generation crowded with good to freaking great games.(Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Mario Sunshine, Voodoo Vince, I-Ninja, Vexx, Tork, Sonic Adventure 1 and Heroes, Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonus, Ratchet and Clank 2 and 3, Jak and Daxter, as well as Daxter [PSP]) But mostly I still love it so much because it keeps pulling me back, something the exceptional Rayman 2 unfortunately has not done. First things first Neo is HARD as fucking nails, especially the last 40% of the game. Something that obviously caused the nancy boy who reviewed it for IGN to give it an unfair 6.9. Just head over to Youtube to get a glimpse of the bright, vibrant visuals and the wonderful score. What that won't tell...