Joe & Mac: A Prehistoric Blast from the Past

When I was a duckling, my parents were responsible for buying all the games for the SNES.  After all, my dad actually got it as some sort of gift from his workplace, and for some inexplicable reason, I was too “afraid” to play any of the games when I was especially young, meaning my parents got the most use out of our first family console.  As such, Joe & Mac was just one of a hearty collection of games my parents had accumulated over the years.  This game stars the titular cavemen (Mac is only available in two-player), who fight and jump their way through 12 stages swarming with dinosaurs and Neanderthals, each level ending with a climactic battle against some huge prehistoric baddy.

Joe & Mac Playthrough on Virtual Bastion

Joe & Mac is a silly SNES game from the Duck’s childhood where you play as a caveman and fight some odd looking dinosaurs whose necks are made of circles.  And a mammoth whose trunk falls off, which is as horrifying as it sounds.  You also obtain meat from defeated Neanderthals, so make of that as you will.

Video from YouTube User: Virtual Bastion

The Return of Nostalgic Notions on Virtual Bastion

Nostalgic Notions is a series where we play 15-20 minutes of a retro game and give our thoughts on it.  It’s a great way to check out a wide variety of classic games in a compact period of time!  Our newest game, Ninja JaJaMaru-kun from 1985, was originally a Japan-exclusive where we must defeat enemies with our trusty ninja star in order to eventually rescue Princess Sakura!

Video from YouTube User: Virtual Bastion

Trine 2: Demo Review

One of the games I grew up with was The Lost Vikings for the SNES, where you would control three unique characters in order to solve puzzles and reach the exit alive.  Recently, I downloaded a demo of a game called Trine 2: The Complete Story that feels somewhat similar.  You control three characters, Amadeus the wizard, who can levitate objects and create blocks out of thin air, Pontius the knight, who is equipped with a sword and shield, and Zoya the thief, who is armed with her bow and trusty grappling hook.

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 Review

For the last ten years, Kirby’s Dream Land 3 and I have kept passing each other by, with no more than mere glances in the other’s direction before ultimately going our separate ways.  Whether in the form of a physical SNES cartridge or a quick download vie the Wii U Virtual Console, I have had multiple opportunities to play the game, but have always chosen to spend my money on the highly praised Kirby Super Star instead.  Finally, with the release of the SNES collection provided by the Switch Online service, I hadn’t any reason to ignore this game any longer.  And now, in this post, I answer the question: do I regret taking so long to play this game?  Well…yes and no.

Day 20: Favorite Video Game Genre

Okay, so we’re two-thirds of the way through the 30 days’ worth of video game posts.  And I still haven’t found a more eloquent way of describing that.  Anyway, we’ve got another “what’s your favorite something-or-other” topic to discuss, my favorite game genre.  As usual, I find this to be a pretty difficult question indeed because I have a wide variety of favorite games spanning several different genres.

Mario, I Forgive You

My relationship with the Mario franchise has been a rocky one.  Early games like Super Mario Bros 1-3, Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64 turned out to be some of the most troublesome games I’ve yet to own, with the latter two taking literally YEARS to beat, while the original trio has yet to be conquered and likely never will be.  I have also found myself to be rather indifferent to the New Super Mario Bros games on the Wii and Wii U.  I have a feeling my lukewarm attitude towards these games stemmed from the fact that I had been hurt by the famous mustachioed plumber just a few times too many.

It’s About Time I Played: Mega Man X

The Duck is a frequent latecomer to video games.  Nevertheless, I have been trying with all due diligence to right this wrong by catching up on a lot of the games I had been missing out on, namely those on the SNES and PS1, with a bit of Sly Cooper thrown in.  Future plans include the Crash Bandicoot trilogy on the PS4, along with hoping that the same will happen with the original Spyro games so I can find a more convenient way to play them, as well.  The most recent series I have tried…Mega Man.

FFV and the Joy of Feeling Competent

I have mentioned it from time to time, but over the last few years, I’ve been trying to catch up on a whole bunch of retro games I had missed.  And at this point, I’m largely done.  Sure, there are definitely more retro games out there that I should play one day, but as for the games I really wanted to check off my list, this goal has been met.  Final Fantasy 4-9, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, EarthBound, Super Metroid, Super Mario RPG, all present and accounted for.  The last one on my list to play was Final Fantasy V, which, like Final Fantasy IV, is probably pretty obscure for anyone who hasn’t been playing Final Fantasy since the beginning.  (Thank you, Kingdom Hearts.  You introduced even non-Final Fantasy fans to characters like Cloud and Squall, but not once do you mention FF6 and prior.  With the exception of Setzer, of all people.  Setzer.)

Final Fantasy 4 and 5 were the only games not explicitly on my list, but they came with Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, respectively, and who am I to pass up on an essentially free pair of games?  While FF4 was merely to pass the time and to say with confidence that, yes, I’ve played Final Fantasy 4, I must say that I enjoyed Final Fantasy 5 far more than I expected to.  Let me summarize the game a bit for anyone who might not be familiar with it.

Day 13: A Game I’ve Played More Than Five Times

Ah, back to the 30-day video game topics.  Despite the obvious implication that this is only supposed to span the course of roughly a month, these posts have been taking me years to get through.  Well, better get back to it.  Right now, we’re only on day 13.  The topic: a game I’ve played more than five times.  There are a lot of games I could name right now that I’ve played far more times than is sane, but the one I’ve chosen to discuss is Donkey Kong Country 2.  By now, many of you are probably more than familiar with the fact that I love this game.  Even more of you are probably just familiar with this game due to your own experiences with it and don’t need any explanation for why it’s such a great game.  So I’m not getting into that.  The game was released in 1995, for crying out loud!  That was 21 years ago!  Wow, has it really been that long…?

All right, so, instead of telling you guys what this game is all about, why don’t I tell you about five of my most memorable experiences with this amazing game?  The first time I really got into playing Super Nintendo games was when my parents had the SNES connected to a TV in the basement.  Being out of the way, it made it so much easier to play these games to my heart’s content, unlike the poor Nintendo 64, which was in the living room.  (You see, the coaxial cable part of the basement TV was okay, so the SNES worked just fine on it.  But the composite…thingies on that TV stopped working, so our N64 only got sound and no picture.  That’s why we got a new TV to connect the N64 to, along with all our other newer devices at the time, while the other TV, along with the SNES, got moved into the basement.)  We already had about 20 SNES games, and some of my best memories from my ducklinghood involved me spending hours in the basement trying out a whole bunch of games I had never played before.