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"A licensed game from the developers of the Ace Combat series."

It’s very odd that I would seek out a licensed game based on a license I (at the time) had never heard of, but The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces had several things going for it. First off, the team behind the Wii exclusive flight game is Project Aces; developer of the highly regarded Ace Combat series.

Secondly, it boasted a unique and ambitious use of motion controls, which is something I’d like to support. And finally, the game retailed at the budget price of $30 on the day of release, though admittedly that could be taken as a strike against its predicted quality.

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"Nice to see you Jim. You been working out?"

“2 Player Reviews” is a series of articles in which two members of the Wing Damage staff separately review a game, so as to give our readers multiple perspectives on the subject matter.

Player 1 – Jonah “spambot” Gregory

“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.

Due to overwhelming demand, a federal court order, and a purple nurple, I have been forced to go back and examine one of the crown jewels of gaming’s yesteryear, Goldeneye.

Before frat boys were learning the intricacies of system linking their Xboxes and Pierce Brosnan was the hot new Bond, Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 set the world on fire (in a good way). Millions of gamers discovered the joy of shooting their friends in the face.

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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.

Rather than releasing a trilogy of Indiana Jones games like they did with Star Wars, Lucasarts and Factor 5 teamed up to make one game that spanned all three films. In Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures, you take on the roll of everyone’s favorite 1940’s action-serial throwback, Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, JR.

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"Life is like a hurricane"

“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.

Back in the late 80’s, Disney had a brilliant idea: To bring well produced cartoons to the after school time slot that was normally filled with soap operas and reruns of The Flintstones. It was a great tactic that produced some very popular series. At some point along the way, Disney made a deal with Capcom to make games based on a few of their shows. DuckTales, a flagship series for “Disney Afternoon”, was one of the first games produced and one of the most popular.

What we didn’t know at the time was that we were getting a game produced by several key members of the Mega Man team, including Keiji Inafune, Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, and Tokuro Fujiwara. This lead not only to the creation of a very tight platformer, but also to some amazing original tunes, most notably the Moon’s theme.

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"Where's the radical Pizza dudeshell turtles?!"

Fans of the Smash Bros. series looking for a new fix will be happy to hear that Ubisoft’s newest addition to the long line of TMNT games, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up”, will scratch that party game/fighter hybrid itch.

While the comparisons to Smash Bros. are inescapable, the dev team said in a recent interview with IGN that this game was built from the ground up. While it retains the simplified fighting controls of the Smash Bros. series, even down to the block/roll to get out of danger (not surprising since the games share many of the same developers), the actual moves your character performs are all based in real martial arts moves.

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"Not to be confused with the non-super return."

I remember being quite fond of all three games in the “Super Star Wars” series when the Super Nintendo was still the latest and greatest. After-all, even to this day my favorite genre remains the 2D platformer. Because of this, it was especially jarring to pull “Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” out of my retro shelf only to find out my childhood memories were about to be shattered.

It’s amazing how much better games can appear through the rose-tinted glasses of our memories. Eight-year-old Jesse would like me to believe that Return of the Jedi is a flawless platformer on par with other greats in the genre. Eight-year-old Jesse is a filthy liar.

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It is safe to say that “Super Star Wars” came out for the SNES at the perfect time during my youth. It was 1992, so I was about 12 years old. My friends and I were just starting to discover our love of the Star Wars films. We had all watched the movies growing up, but had not yet gone into that phase where we were obsessing over them.

One of us rented “Super Star Wars” and we were all hooked. We started delving more and more into the universe, picking up the expanded universe novels, which at the time were just starting to get off the ground. By the time “Super Return of the Jedi” came out in 1994, we were full fledged Star Wars nerds.

So how does “Super Star Wars” stack up now?

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"Magic Bullets Abound"

I came into “Wanted: Weapons of Fate” not expecting much. The game being a videogame adaptation of a film, that is an adaptation of a graphic novel, I was prepared for the worst. Surprisingly, Wanted: WoF actually manages to rise above the average licensed game.

The game begins immediately after the movie ends, and without having watched the movie since its release in theaters, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on half the time. The player character swaps between Wesley and his father, Cross, both telling their own story between two different time lines. The story is a poor follow-up to the film, which didn’t have too strong of a plot to begin with.

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"Raise the roof!"

Movie tie-in games have a history of not living up to the source material. Movies based on TV shows have the same problem. So what chance does a movie tie-in based on a TV show have? As it turns out, not a lot.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (SNES) is a beat-em-up that does not even attempt to follow the plot of the movie, other than having the same final boss, Ivan Ooze.

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