27/September/2016
ONM Remembered - #409
"Finish that zombie then take out the bad-ass with the teddy"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 122 (November 2002)
I'm a lousy person for not appreciating what I've got until it's gone, and the GBA... no, I don't think I can bring myself to say it. Not yet, anyway. Buying that Earthworm Jim port only to discover it was a choppy, clunky mess was a bit of a day ruiner. And you wonder, even if I did trade it in, what else was there worth getting?
That aside, it's still mighty nifty looking back at the handheld's lineup and the sheer variety of stuff there was for it. I admit I thought it was a bummer that ONM's reviews were so brief, but looking up footage of the games does reveal there's not a lot of meat on their bones, so I suppose the bite-sized reviews worked well in that regard. And hey, you get more reviews for your buck! Now you can learn that the GBA hosted a gaiden-sequel to obscure PlayStation beat-em-up Gekido, and the developers behind Pink Panther Goes To Hollywood were riding high on Nickelodeon money to deliver us the same old crap a decade later!
29/September/2016
ONM Remembered - #410
"WINO ASSAULT"
from Mean Machines SEGA Issue 7 (April 1993)
01/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #411 - prelude to Wallop Week
"Your executioner awaits..."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 63 (December 1997)
It's been a while since I've had a theme week! And like last time, this one was hardly conceived as a calculated attempt at running commentary on a niche subject: I just realised, oh, I've a bunch of scans for games about hitting people. It'd save me a bit of trouble if I ran them all at once, wouldn't it! All this week, expect inane commentary on fighting games from a dope who knows nothing about fighting games. If I had planned this in advance I'd probably have come up with a better name for it. Week of Wounding, maybe...?
02/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 1
"He's got a scar on his face, so by the Hollywood rule of facial deformity he's obviously a bad'un. Even if he does dress like a hotel valet."
from 64 Magazine volume 10 (1998)
Another tantalising fighting game review from 64 Magazine, this time it's... Art of Fighting for Nintendo 64?! No, silly, it's Hiryu no Ken Twin, which saw an English release as Flying Dragon.
This was always one of the niftiest looking fighting games, essentially packing in two different modes: a straight-faced version and a cutesy chibi fighter with bizarre RPG features, stat-building and other weird inclusions. For a scrub who's never gotten a handle on fighting games, dumb add-ons like that really sell a game I'd obviously have zero competence in! (also making the sumo wrestler a ridiculous robot gorilla was an inventive way of getting around the fact that nobody willingly chooses the sumo fighter)
03/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 2
"This handsome fellow is Gexorr, the final boss. He lives inside Zorr, the previous boss, to avoid council tax."
from 64 Magazine volume 9 (1998)
I know, I know, not another fighting game review. What is this, a
theme week or something? It's easier to
satiate my interest by highlighting these than, oh, I don't know, playing the
game myself.
This is also the first review to suggest Dual Heroes is based off an
established franchise - something I was totally oblivious to, but dubious if
that's a true fact or not. The game does feature work by Tamotsu Shinohara and
Keita Amemiya, both noted long-running character designers for Kamen Rider
and Super Sentai, so that might be where the mistake was made.
04/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 3
"Scott Norton was once mistaken for a beached whale, tranquilised and put into San Diego Zoo, only being discovered when the relevant authorities realised whales don't speak English."
from N64 Magazine issue 12 (February 1998)
Tim Weaver stalls having to actually review WCW vs. NWO World Tour by making over thirty cards of made-up wrestler trivia. At least, I assume it's made-up. Wrestling is bonkers enough without knowing there's multiple mute secret agents who are hundreds of years old.
05/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 4
"FROM THE CREATORS OF BLOODY ROAR 1, 2 AND 3"
I'm sure there are better ways of shilling a fighting game about animals than dressing that poor woman like a dog's dinner. The two looming faces even look to be having a chortle at her expense. "Can you believe those shoulderpads?!"
06/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 5
"Thankfully, what MK Mythologies lacks in graphics, sound, story and social credibility, it makes up for in playability. Only joking! The gameplay is as shit as everything else."
from N64 Pro issue 6 (April 1998)
Shock horror, it's yet another review of this dang ol' game, back to the traditional sniping and jeering rather than 64 Magazine's unexpected words of praise. It's just one of those games that's fascinating to read about! How many more times can I express my excited bewilderment at turning a fighting game into an exploration adventure with RPG elements?!
07/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 6
"But unlike the bizarre Oozumo, this doesn't feature fat lard-ased, pony tailed, pampers wearing, slap-happy, hippo-like mountains (the kind that made Gazza's mate Jimmy Five Bellies look like Twiggy)."
from N64 Pro issue 6 (April 1998)
Yet another wrasslin' feature, this time from the land of the rising sun in the form of New Japan Pro Wrestling: Tohkon Road Brave Spirits! I, er, have as much to say about it as reviewer Noely does. I'm faintly familiar with some of these names thanks to a wrestle-mad pal (and his rad custom sprite collection was a great help pegging names to faces), but I confess I'm disappointed the in-game graphics are realistically proportioned and not the chibi little ruffians depicted in the illustrations. I've said it before and I've said it again, if every sports game's artstyle depicted the characters as chubby little dwarves I'd be set for life.
08/October/2016
ONM Remembered - Wallop Week, day 7
"Still, all the best games filch the best elements from films, and Mace's character design is no exception. Well, at least they left the 'Knights Who Say Nee' out. Thankfully."
from N64 Magazine issue 9 (December 1997)
The last of this week's fighting game guff, because half the fun of these reviews is
extrapolating what they're like based purely off how cool the screenshots and
page design are. Based purely off the first paragraph of Jes Bickham's colourful
review, I'm convinced Mace: The Dark Age is more a playa than a game.
(i'm sorry)
The usual schedule resumes on Tuesday, and with the subject matter no longer limited to fighting games, I might actually be faintly familiar with the content for once! Or not. Half the writing in this column is talking out of my ass, let's face it, and when has that ever stopped me?
11/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #412
"Dom watches in misery as the errant skateboard rolls away, leaving him looking rather foolish."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 116 (May 2002)
This was evidently a short-lived feature (so short I only
discovered it when filing in my gap of issues I missed in 2002!) where a
member of the ONM staff would make a buffoon of themselves trying to pull off
sick sports stunts, while getting shown up by not only an actual sports star,
but a video game as well. Someone clearly had it out for poor Dom.
Given how the feature was a glorified excuse to give away rad sports merch, it's
no surprise it wasn't a fixture. Dom can only be humiliated so long as his
failure is sponsored and lucky readers can profit from it.
13/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #413
"Bomberman Plays With A PlayStation"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 66 (March 1998)
15/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #414
"Noddy counts the cash he's made from the game spin-off of his cartoon!"
from Nintendo Pro issue 33 (2000)
Ah, the Game Boy Color - one of the most populous breeding grounds
for licensed games, where generic platforming was finally dethroned as the go-to
genre... in favour of generic minigame collections.
I confess I've totally lost all my knowledge of Noddy - I was actually hoping
VGJunk had covered this
game so I could link to them for a quick explanation and a few laughs, but I
guess not. (good thing their Patreon has requests as a reward
tier!) I even watched an episode last year to refresh my memory, and my
only take-away was that Noddy's pronounciation of "goblin" is positively
adorable.
18/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #415
"Please go now. We're not calling the police! My mum's phone number is 999 as well! Hello? HELP US!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 132 (September 2003)
If forum signatures just weren't cutting it in conveying the way you live your life through video games, here comes ONM with an amusing personality quiz that does a bang-up job of insulting anyone who even looks at it. (what if i liked the GBA SP????)
20/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #416
"Baywatch Pam in videogame outburst fury row type thing"
from Computer & Video Games issue 168 (November 1995)
22/October/2016
ONM Remembered - #417
"If you drive off-road for more than three seconds, you get told off. Thanks, mum."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 07 (September 2006)
Boy, what a sterile page design. The ONM reboot probably has five times the wordage its reviews had back in the old N64 days... but you really miss that visual spice, y'know?
Also I can't keep but find it strange to have a game based on Cars, the movie where cars are living, breathing creatures with faces and everything... and the game's camera is forever pinned on their mundane backsides. Not only is it a bit like a Transformers game with only vehicles and no robots (cough), but it also makes me feel like I'm objectifying poor McQueen. Surely there's more to him than the junk in his trunk.