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I know what you’re thinking. “Where’s the Friday Old Games review for this week?” Well, gentle reader, I’ll tell you. In an attempt to promote the new jetpack-infused third-person-shooter, Dark Void, Capcom forged an imaginary story of an abandoned NES game named Dark Rift. The game has now been “revived” and released as Dark Void Zero. While it’s not really an “old game”, let’s just pretend the story is true.

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"Like Ecco the Dolphin, except nothing like it."

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

In the golden age of the NES, Capcom made a number of games based on Disney cartoons. While games like Ducktales where a staple of my childhood, a few of them passed me by until more recent times. One of these was Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

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“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

I checked with the WingDamage gods and they agree that you cannot have an unofficial Mario day without discussing the original Super Mario Bros. It simply cannot happen.

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"The Wizard never saw it coming."

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Today is a special themed edition of “Friday Old Games”. With our recent review of New Super Mario Bros. Wii now live, I’m taking this opportunity to talk about my favorite game in the franchise, Super Mario Bros. 3.

While the original Super Mario Bros. laid down an excellent starting point for the series, the sequel (known to us non-Japanese gamers as The Lost Levels) felt like more of an expansion than a new game. In October of 1988, Nintendo of America released their own Super Mario Bros. 2 (later to be titled Super Mario USA in Japan) at the same time that Japanese gamers were getting their hands on the revolutionary Super Mario Bros. 3.

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"The true successor to Super Mario World."

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the follow up to the DS game entitled New Super Mario Bros. It was only a matter of time before having the word “new” in the title of a game would become terribly confusing. Despite what the poor naming choice might suggest, this is not a port of the DS game, but rather a completely new Mario game.

Like any 2D platformer in the franchise, the game will have you running and jumping on the heads of enemies through eight themed worlds before finally reaching Bowser and rescuing the princess yet again. But this time around, Mario has new powers, multiplayer, and some of the zaniest level design (in a good way) the series has ever seen.

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"It's like Mario meets Bubble Bobble meets babies."

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is a 2D platformer where you control a baby named Upa who has been given a magic rattle. Upa must go through seven cheerfully themed worlds to get to a goat demon and rescue a treasure chest full of other babies. Yes, you read that correctly.

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"A whimsical journey at a budget price."

I’ve always loved the concept of A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobonia for the NES. The problem is, between the confusing map, limited jelly beans, and unforgiving hit detection, I could never get anywhere in the darn thing. Wayforward (developers of the fantastic Contra 4) decided to take that fascinating concept and “re-imagine” it into a more accessible and modern game.

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"Despite popular belief, this is a screenshot and not something framed on my wall."

I have come to the conclusion that the staff at Vanillaware is made up of a bunch of wizards who use very powerful magic to make the graphics for their games. The above screenshot alone is enough to cause a “double take“. And yet, that is nothing compared to seeing “Muramasa: The Demon Blade”  in motion. The game somehow managers to look like a moving painting, and I don’t say that lightly.

But Muramasa’s graphics are already becoming increasingly well known. The story that really must be told is that of its gameplay. After all, the prettiest game in the world (which this just might be) is nothing without fun and engaging gameplay to back it up.

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"manliness (noun): Fighting a giant space centipede while entering Earth's atmosphere."

Over the last year, a new trend has gained popularity with game developers. I’m talking about new games made in the style (both graphically and in terms of gameplay) of “retro games”. On North American shores, it would seem that “Mega Man 9″ started the retro movement. However, in Japan, the country where such games originate, Konami’s “Gradius ReBirth” was released almost a month earlier.

The reverting of the Gradius franchise into an “old school” style was apparently successful enough to not only spawn “Contra ReBirth”, but also “Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth” and “Salamander ReBirth” (according to recent ESRB ratings and filed trademarks).  Is a game intentionally made to look and play like something a decade or two old worth the ten dollar price tag? Let’s find out!

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"2D is back in business!"

We are seeing a glorious return of the 2D Fighter genre lately. Games like “BlazBlue”, “Street Fighter IV” (the graphics may be 3D, but it’s the gameplay that counts), the upcoming “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom”, the digital release of “Marvel vs. Capcom 2″, and “The King of Fighters XII” are breathing new life into what seemed like a diminishing genre.

The King of Fighters XI (ps2) was relatively well received when it released in 2007. It had a variety of modes, both single-player and multiplayer, and had a very large character roster. But, just as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 ripped a large portion of its assets from previous fighters (like 1995’s Marvel Super-Heroes), KOFXI was able to pack in so many characters by taking their assets from a combination of previous entries in the series and other SNK games.

This leads me to my first point of discussion: The King of Fighters XII, though it is the latest entry in the series, has less than half the number of characters that XI has. Why this is surprising to anyone is beyond me. Every character had to be painstakingly redrawn in High Definition from scratch, since ripping sprites from previous entries was no longer an option. Yes, there are a lot of characters not present in KOFXII that I miss, but the characters that made the cut feel as solid as ever, and there are already talks to add more via DLC.

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