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“if yr cmptr cn rd this,” from the August, 1985 issue of Computer Entertainment, the latest addition to my reference library. This is a neat time capsule piece about how interactive fiction game developers were in an arms race to develop the most user-friendly text parser.

PDF version here.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that there were “parser wars” in the mid-80s, but it makes sense in retrospect. The traditional video game market was all but dead in the United States, and any surviving software companies jumped ship for computers, where the commonly held belief was that game players were after more sophisticated experiences than the arcade-inspired games on the consoles.

I can’t help but wonder if trying to make text interaction even more complicated actually resulted in better game design. With hindsight it almost feels like an overcompensation for the simplistic games that flooded store shelves and created the crash in the first place.

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Part of the reason I maintain an extensive library of video game magazines is to get as complete a history as I can on any given subject. I don’t like loose ends! So when I was recently asked to talk on camera about how the American video game enthusiast media of 1995 felt about Nintendo’s RPG masterpiece, EarthBound, I was happy to be able to pull out what I believe to be every review written. And here they all are, lovingly scanned and restored by me! In order:

Electronic Gaming Monthly (July, 1995)
Nintendo Power (June, 1995)
Game Players (July, 1995)
VideoGames (July, 1995)
GameFan (”Viewpoint” capsule reviews) (August, 1995)
GameFan (full review) (August, 1995)
GamePro (July, 1995)

Next Generation and Electronic Games did not review the game. Game Informer appears to have not, but I don’t have the June or September issues, so I can’t say that with 100% certainty (also, if you have Game Informer issues from 1995-1999, we should talk).  It’s worth noting that Nintendo Power also had a ten-page extended feature that I did not include, as it’s an overview with no criticism as opposed to a review (heck, even the “review” included here barely qualifies)

The biggest takeaway I get, slapping all these magazines on my desk and reading them back-to-back, is just how completely offended the critics were by the game’s art direction. The “infantile graphics” made VIdeoGames’ Geoff Higgins “want to gag,” apparently. EGM’s John Gurka “laughed out loud” when he first saw the game, while GameFan capsule reviewer Skid’s initial impression was “no way! These graphics are just to [sic] fruity.”  Not one reviewer seemed to like the art direction, though some - particularly at GameFan - were able to power through it and enjoy the game underneath.

It’s tempting to look back and roll your eyes at how these critics just didn’t understand, man, just as it’s tempting to look at Nintendo’s “This Game Stinks” marketing campaign as coming from a marketing department that also didn’t understand, man, but I think they both tell us very clearly why this game didn’t catch on: this was a very difficult game to sell in 1995.

Sure, we all basically agree that the game is gorgeous now, but try to put yourself in the mindset of a video game critic in June of 1995, when the game debuted. RPGs were only just catching on in the U.S., ushering in what many felt was the start of “mature” games no longer being exclusively for those rich kids who had computers. Square’s Chrono Trigger was also coming out around the same time, so the sudden switch from the anime-inspired Square house style that most associated with the genre to a look that evoked childlike wonder must have been jarring.

And let’s not forget the rest of the video game industry at the time. Sega’s Saturn and Sony’s PlayStation were already out in Japan (and the former would see a surprise U.S. debut right about when these reviews were written), so for most cutting-edge game enthusiasts, it was starting to look like 2D graphics were a thing of the past. Even Nintendo was starting to leave 2D graphics behind: at that year’s Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January, when EarthBound was quietly shown for the first time, Nintendo’s main focus was on the 3D capabilities of its Super FX chip for the Super Nintendo. Literature from the time shows that its three spotlight games that show all had polygonal 3D graphics: StarFox 2, Comanche, and FX Fighter (literally none of these games actually managed to ship, but that’s another story).

And in the middle of all of this forward-thinking excitement, we’ve got this strange, backward-looking, reflective, beautiful game vying for attention. I can’t imagine a scenario where the game could have been a hit in this environment.

[Aggregating EarthBound’s contemporary review scores gives a figure of about 72%. If this was on Metacritic, that number would be in a yellow box.]

earthbound gamepreservation snes

Human’s cult classic Fire Pro Wrestling series started life in Japan in 1989 on the PC Engine, but it wasn’t until 2001′s Game Boy Advance version that we saw a release of any of the series’ twenty-two titles released in the United States. However, a discovery made today shows that we almost had one way back in 1992!

This morning, Hidden Palace unveiled Jesse “The Body” Venture Wrestling Superstars, an unreleased Sega Genesis game from DreamWorks Interactive. Yes, that’s the same Jesse Ventura that was the governor of Minnesota and, double yes, that’s the same DreamWorks that makes Shrek movies [actually no it’s not! I forgot there were two DreamWorks game publishers!].

The game was actually a localization of the fourth Fire Pro game, Thunder Pro Wrestling Biographies. It’s basically identical, minus changing the characters and adding Ventura in as the star.

This is just one of what look to be dozens of new Genesis binaries Hidden Palace is releasing this month, from what appears to be an internal Sega ROM archive from the time. They’ve already got some unreleased American localizations up, so I’m looking forward to seeing what else they’ve got up their sleeves!

Source: hiddenpalace.org unreleased

Here’s a neat find: the materials sent to the press when Halo was originally announced on July 21, 1999. As most everyone knows by now, Halo was originally slated to be a Macintosh game, before Microsoft acquired developer Bungie and turned it into an Xbox launch title.

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I’ve been slowly ripping some old press kit discs that likely came from Future’s Games Business magazine. These will all be available eventually, but I thought this particular find was cool enough to share early.

gamepreservation halo bungie

Here’s Gluk the Thunder Warrior, a game distributed exclusively by Spanish publisher Gluk. This is actually Taiwanese developer Micro Genius’ original game, Thunder Warrior, but with the lead character replaced by Gluk’s mascot. Apparently its name is Gluk, but I would have gone with Gluky or Glukbert personally.

According to the Bootleg Game Wiki’s undumped games list, a ROM for this game is not generally available, so I was delighted when NintendoAge user Werrock decided to back up and share their copy.

The game itself is…well, kind of a mess frankly, but I’m still stoked to see it available. I think Gluk was a really interesting company, and is a part of Spanish video game industry history that is mostly unknown outside of the fans who were playing its games at the time.

Download the ROM here.

Here’s a cool surprise - Atlus’ unreleased Wing Force, an arcade SHMUP, preserved and emulated in MAME!

The game was developed by A.I., a fairly prolific contract studio that’s still in business today. If you’re following this Tumblr you’ve probably played at least one of their games - maybe Wrath of the Black Manta, or Bonk 3?

As you can see, this was a very Raiden-inspired game, much like A.I.’s prior arcade SHMUP, Blazeon, owes its existence to Gradius. 

The board was recently sold in a Yahoo! Japan Auction listing, and was acquired and dumped by Shou. Read way more about it here.

atlus unreleased a.i. wing force

Here’s an unreleased Tom & Jerry game for the SNES, just recently discovered by a collector. That Tom sprite is crazy big!

This would have been published by Hi Tech Expressions, as a follow-up to a 1993 predecessor developed by Riedel, the children-focused studio whose team more-or-less became Postal creator Running With Scissors. I don’t know if this would have been a Ridel game as well, but that Jerry sprite sure looks like their work to me. I’ll ask Vince Desi and update this post if he replies.

Edit: Confirmed! As Desi remembers it, this was among the Hanna-Barbera projects that was killed when Turner Broadcasting bought the rights to its back catalog.

gaming unreleased game snes game preservation tom & jerry super nintendo

The legendary “lost” game from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, the Saturn game-that-never-was Sonic X-Treme, is playable for the first time! Sort of.

This is actually a work-in-progress tech demo that is the result of some brave and talented folks porting the original source code to modern Windows machines. And the source itself is in an unfinished state, so there’s not really a “game” here so much as there is a tech demo.

Still, this is probably as close as you’re going to ever get to playing this game and seeing what could have been.

Download it for Windows here.

gaming sonic the hedgehog sonic x-treme sega saturn sega unreleased game

Courtesy of NintendoAge user ars2pd, here’s a rare find: a reply sent by Nintendo of America to an inquiring mind interested in the Nintendo Entertainment System, before it was widely available.

It’s a pretty fun read. Here are some of my takeaways:

- There’s been some debate as to how Nintendo rolled out the national launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System. While this doesn’t solve all of the mysteries, we do have documentation that the system was only in New York and Los Angeles as of April of 1986. 

- Without the benefit of modern terminology like “platform game,” even Nintendo didn’t know how to describe Super Mario Bros., referring to it here as “a multi-level adventure maze game.”

- In fact, you’ll note several descriptions falling back on “maze” as a term, even though the only one here I’d describe that way is Clu Clu Land. The term was popularized after games like Pac-Man set the standard, but it’s interesting to see games like Wrecking Crew and Donkey Kong defined that way.

- Pauline from Donkey Kong is referred to here as “Paula.” A typo, surely.

Source: nintendoage.com gaming nintendo nintendo entertainment system nes super mario bros nes test launch

A lot of you are probably familiar with Electronic Gaming Monthly, but did you know about its predecessor?

Electronic Game Player was a very short-lived publication run by Steve Harris and a lot of the same U.S. National Video Game Team cohorts that would go on to start EGM with him. It’s a dinky, amateurish little thing, and it only lasted four issues before closing shop, but it also has its charms.

What makes EGP historically significant is that it is the first multiplatform video game magazine to be published after the industry took a nosedive in the early 80s, taking all the magazines with it. Its existence was among the first glimmers of hope that the industry was on the mend.

This is the very first issue, cover dated January/February 1988, which I scanned from my library. It’s, uh, pretty rare. I know of three copies that exist.

For the love of god if you have issue 2, let me know.

Download this at Retromags.

Edit: People are having a had time downloading it from Retromags, try my Dropbox instead.

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