The history of video games has been plagued with numerous mediocre titles featuring popular characters, doing things outside their comfort zone. Well okay, they haven’t ALL been mediocre; generally the ones with Mario in the title are worth taking a look at. I can’t say the same for Dr. Robotonik’s Mean Bean Machine or Link’s Crossbow training, though.

Mega Man, a character held near & dear to the hearts of most of the Wing Damage crew, has starred in several lackluster spin-off titles. In this month’s “I Am Error,” we take a look at three of ‘em – Mega Man Soccer, Mega Man Battle & Chase and Super Adventure Rockman.

If you have played any of these titles in the past or have access to play them now, please do and email us or comment with your thoughts. We’ll read your missives on the next edition of the “I Am Error” podcast, which will be available for consumption in just a few weeks.

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I was never a huge comic book nerd growing up, but I always had a soft spot when it came to Spider-Man. I ate up the cartoon like the sugar injected cereal that accompanied it’s viewings. I dumped a small fortune of birthday money on action figures and playsets. When all the parental planets aligned and I was able to rent a game from our local Hastings, I would usually pick up Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage.

To give you a brief overview, Maximum Carnage is a early 90’s beat’em up out out by LJN/Acclaim that features Spidey and Venom as they try to put a stop to the serial murder Cletus Kasady, better known as the symbiote infused supervillain Carnage.

While I had some really great games for the SNES, Maximum Carnage still stands out to me as the most memorable. Since we were a Nintendo town for the most part, and only one of my friends even had a Genesis, I didn’t know this game came out on anything other than SNES. That being the case, I still hold it among my top favorite SNES games of all time. When I found it recently at a used bookstore, I decided to pick it up to see if it actually was any good or if my memories were blurred thru the lens of nostalgia and youthful fanboy-ism.

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Most gamers were introduced to the Super Nintendo through the latest adventures of a certain portly plumber, but for me things were a little different. I was too young to have a job when the system released, and I still had only experienced a fraction of the NES library anyway. But as time went on, focus increasingly shifted to the more Super of Nintendos on the market, and eventually a cheaper package was released sans-Super Mario World. It was after this that one of my older brothers surprised me with what I still consider to be the greatest video game system ever made.

A Super Nintendo, the very same one that is hooked up behind me right now, sat on my bed and I was beside myself with excitement. The cheaper model came with a mail-in voucher for Super Mario All-Stars, but what was I to play in the meantime? It turned out the other surprise my brother had in store was a copy of Cybernator, a game I had never heard of before.

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Superlatives are interesting things. Even though most reduce down to simply “better” or “best”, countless hundreds have become mainstays of the English lexicon. Just pick up any thesaurus and take a look. Seriously, try it. Oh, and when you’re done, look up the word “lexicon”. You know what it means? Thesaurus. I know, right? It’s all so meta. So meta in fact, it’s beyond meta. Fun fact: Meta comes from a Greek root meaning “beyond”. What does all this have to do with the Super Nintendo you ask? You’ve got some nerve mister.

One day, way back in the summer of 1986, my friend Franklin called me and said he had just got something called a “Nine Ten Doetainment Sister” for his birthday and that he wanted me to come over and “play it”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed Franklin was high (again) and was seeing ‘skin spiders’ (again). But you know Franklin, what a nut. Anyway, I didn’t really have any friends and I was intrigued at this whole ‘Doetainment Sisters’ idea. So over I went. Once there, I discovered two things: 1) Franklins’ parents had actually got him a “Nintendo Entertainment System” for his birthday and, 2) Franklin wasn’t high at all. He was drunk. Very, very drunk. Seriously kids, stay in school.

That summer Franklin and I played his NES (a term I just invented just now) until school started. I remember it well. There were so many games. My favorite? It was a tie. Between all of them. I found it to be an amazing toy game system. It was better than an Odyssey, taped to the back of a ColecoVision, stapled to an Atari 2600. But as often happens, time passed and Franklin and his NES (mostly the latter) grew apart. Little did I know at the time, but the best was yet to come.

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Well good day there fellow gaming geeks and geekettes. The Applemonkey here and I’m going to chit chat with you kids about a thing I always enjoy doing: collecting accessories. Today’s hunt will be on the Super Nintendo. From the Super Gameboy controller to the Miracle Piano, hunting for SNES accessories is always a tantalizing experience. I’m going to talk about three unique items that you just might want to hunt for. Go grab yourself some animal crackers and Yoo-hoo, sit back and enjoy! (more…)

On the one-hundred and thirtieth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, you must think fourth dimensionally. When you travel to the end of the episode, the train tracks will have already been built, thus making your trip across the ravine successful.

This episode sees the return of Wes Johnson, who brings us tails of strange medical phenomenon (as per usual) and his thoughts on Unpleasant Horse and L.A. Noire. Jesse has finished Bastion while Jonah continues to make his way through Pirates of Black Cove. Adam joins us for the last time recording from the states. He has been playing through Pictobits and Rabbids Travel in Time.

After the usual news and new game release talk, we also give a quick happy 20th shout-out to one of our favorite consoles, the Super Nintendo.

All this and more on Episode #130, “4D Scratch ‘N’ Sniff Time Travel!”

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Back in the SNES era, one may remember a title Interplay and Visual Concepts developed that bears the word “Clay” in it. Probably to most, the first game that will pop in your head is the memorable Clayfighter fighting game. But there is another lesser known “Clay” gem they both produced in the same year called Claymates, a colorful platformer that hid under the shadows throughout the console’s life.

Claymates is about a boy named Clayton who one day is in a laboratory with his father, who has created a serum that can transform clay into animals. Apparently witch doctors fiend for this stuff because one magically appears out of nowhere and demands that Clayton’s father hand over the serum. He denies him and the witch doctor then strikes Clayton with lightning, transforming him into a blue ball of clay, then proceeds to steal the serum and Clayton’s father away in a flash. Clayton vows to rescue his father and the serum, even if he is just a ball of clay.

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It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the launch of the Super Nintendo. It may have taken us an extra nine months to get the machine here in North America, but I’m sure we can all agree it was worth the wait. My friends and I had been drooling over the screenshots in gaming magazines for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few months. They showed off the latest Mario, where he was riding some kind of crazy looking dinosaur.

There were screenshots of games we had no idea what they were about, like Act Raiser. There was this flying game that looked like they were pulling off actual 3D. Our minds were sufficiently blown.

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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.

Back in 1992, id Software set the world (of PC gaming nerds) on fire by making the first in a new genre called “First Person Shooters”. The best part: Wolfenstein 3D was shareware, so it was not only legal, but encouraged that you give the first episode of the game to your friends.

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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.

Soul Blazer is a member of the prestigious Quintet Quintet, five cult games created by Japanese studio Quintet and published by Pre-Squared Enix. Around the era of Final Fantasy VI, Secret of Mana, and WingDamage’s beloved Chrono Trigger, Quintet was slaving away at creating some of the most creative games of the SNES era.

In a time where Publishers were the face of gaming, Quintet stood out as one of the few developers who had complete control over their body of work.

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