Age of Wonders

Nice tabletop style RPG releases in 1999. The story really isn't all that great but the gameplay, artwork and everything else is really good or it was when it was released.

Centurion Defender of Rome

Another real time strategy game released in the early 90's for the PC Amiga and Sega. I still have my old copy laying around for my Sega and Theme Park as well. This is one of the games I played most as a child until things like Command and Conquer and X-Com were released.

Powermonger

Another game by non other than Bullfrog. They made a lot of good games before they were bought out.
This is a real time strategy game for multiple systems with several releases from 1990-1994.

Youtube top 100

Have you guys looked at the top viewed videos on youtube? It's dominated by garbage like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Rihanna. I mean yea they make some catchy tunes but there is much better music around.
Queen doesn't even have a single video in the top 100. As far as I can tell this is the closest with 52.8 million views which puts it about 27.5 million short of being in the top 100.

I'm not some old fart, I'm not even 30 yet. I grew up with hip hop and rap music. I am open to just about any kind of music but why does stuff like Baby, Bad Romance and some baby biting a toddlers finger have infinitely more views than Love Me Tender, Bohemian Rhapsody and Hurt.
Something needs to be done about this! But what I don't know. For now enjoy some good music.
Johnny Cash "Hurt"
Elvis Presley "Love Me Tender"

Well

I don't think blogging is for me but I wish everyone the best of luck! I might stop in from time to time.
Have some parting music from the great Maynard James Keenan.

Tropico 2 Pirate Cove

Released in 2003 for the PC/Mac. It is rather simplistic compared to other tropico games but is also unique and faster paced.

Doom

The game that jump started the overly saturated FPS gaming market we live with today. Yes there was Wolfenstein 3D before Doom but it is said that over 10 million copies of the shareware version of Doom were distributed. Only around 1 million people actually bought the full version of the game but that was more than enough to fund future development. Doom was released in 1993 by ID software.

Lean on Me

Great song by Bill Withers.
Been pretty busy lately and have a bit of a mental block.
A lot of old games out there but most of them don't really stand out. Meh.

Suikoden II

Arguably the best in the series, it certainly gets my vote. The plot is basically the same, you are a young man whose father figure was a hero and it is your job to fight a corrupt empire. Other than that the story is almost completely different, it takes place on the same land mass so some of the story bleeds over and a few characters play a part in both games. In Suikoden 1 you wind up fighting your father but in this game you wind up fighting your best friend.

Suikoden

One of the best and possibly most under rated role-playing games of all time. Released between December of 95 and April of 97 back when it took a LONG time for games like this to release outside of Japan.

Hello!

I am so sorry, I have been very busy with other stuff lately and trying to sort stuff out in my life but I am still around. I will post some more reviews soon!
I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2, like I said it's really nothing special but its easy to play and its fast paced fun. If you are not that good it doesn't matter too much because its not like WoW where there are dozens of tier levels of items. Pretty much everyone new and old is at the same level, yes some weapons are more favored than other but the bonus for using them really isn't game breaking. Same with armor hats item sets etc, using certain items and sets is great but not ground breaking in any way.
Great game for collectors because there are quite a few items and some quite rare. There are some somewhat strict limits on how much you can get in a week tho, from what I have read you can only receive drops for the first 15 or so hours a week you play. I don't really look at that as a bad thing tho because if you have a full time job and other responsibilities then 15 hours a week is a decent time. And you can still play as much as you want you just won't be getting any item drops. Achievement items however you can get no matter how much you play and there are a lot of promotional items with new promotions coming out all the time.
Anyway it's a pretty solid game and since it's free to play that's just awesome.
Also I started using Netflix and was really disappointed in video quality because where I live the highest data rates are 1.5MB which apparently puts be at the bottom of the rung. I however found a way to manually set the video quality and it works great, shows are actually watchable now.
"After clicking in the movie window, click the following:

Mac: Cntl + Shift + Option + S

PC: Cntl + Shift + Alt + S

A window will pop up that allows for manual selection."
Now to clarify you need to wait till the movie is playing then CLICK on the MOVIE and push and hold those buttons. This of course has its ups and downs as you won't actually be streaming if you select higher quality video but hey whatever it looks so much better.
Anyway like I said I will post some more reviews soon thanks for stopping by. Will check out blogs in the morning, time to watch a flick before bed.

Hey guys

Sorry I have been feeling down lately and I won't go into why, sufficed to say it's hard to find motivation to blog.
How about some depressing music to set the mood?

Song is Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers released in 1971 on the album Just As I Am and as a single.

Song is I Cross My Heart by George Straight which was released in 1992 as a single and on the album Pure Country. I know most people hate country music but it's a good song and fits my mood.

Anyway I'm gonna go eat some food and play some TF2, I'm not particularly good at it but it's nice fast paced fun. Right up till that damn spy pops out and stabs your entire team in the back.

Terraria

I've actually not played this game but from what I seen it looks wicked fun. It's an indie game with old school graphics and its available on steam for $10.

Ninex

The Ninex.info Server Team is once again in need of your help.

The server is currently hosting three projects:

• "UFO: Alien Invasion"
• "UFO: The Two Sides"
• "OpenXcom".

Lovely Day

We've had a bit of a drought but today it rained so today's a lovely day. Oh it was also a good 10F-15F cooler than normal which was great.
I have a post saved up for tomorrow as well.
Hope you enjoy the song it is a pretty good one.

Song is Lovely Day by Bill Withers originally released in 1977 as a single and on the album Menagerie.

Movie Monday: Labyrinth

A wonderful and slightly twisted movie from Jim Henson released in 1986 starring Jim Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and of course lots of muppets. Sorry I was absent yesterday got busy and lazy.
Anyway it's a really weird movie and certainly not for everyone but I enjoyed it.

UFO2 Extraterrestrials

A preview on another X-Com style game coming from an indie developer. This is a second release and it should be noted the first game was not all that spectacular but I am sure they will improve on this release.

UFO2Extraterrestrials: Shadows over Earth

• A fully 3D game combining real-time global strategy & air combat with turn-based tactical missions

• A turn-based “I-Go-You-Go“ tactical squad-based game system

• Interactive environments with destructible terrain.

• A large number of technologies, weapons, and combat units to develop

• A large number of aliens to interrogate

• Strong RPG elements where soldiers’ stats improve with experience

• Dynamic lighting for intense fire-fights

• Final Gameplay design and balance tweaks by the author of the popular
  original UFO: ET Bman Ease of Use Mod.

SimAnt

Really great game that I have plugged countless hours in. Designed by Will Wright, published by Maxis and released in 1991 for PC/mac 1992 for Amiga and 1993 for SNES.

Populous

Another amazing game from Bullfrog, released in 1989 for a multitude of systems including the PC and SNES.

Master of Orion 2

This great game was released for the PC back in 1996. In it you select one of several pre-made races or create your own with various bonuses and weaknesses. But before that you select custom aspects of the galaxy.

Defense Grid: The Awakening

This is a tower building game for the PC and XBLA. You build a few starting towers and as you kill aliens you get credits to build and upgrade more towers. Your job is to keep the aliens from making off with all of your energy cores which is quite easy, it is much harder however to keep them from taking any at all.

Dune for Sega Genesis

This game was released in 1993 and by the same people who brought us Command & Conquer 2 years later.

Movie Monday

For today's movie I choose Dune(1984).

Well this movie is quite dated by today's standards but it has a great story and some pretty good acting.
It is set in the distant future and revolves around the struggle for control of a small desert planet that only has one abundant resource. This resource however is only found on this one planet and has some extraordinary properties.

Sorry

I've been letting stress get to me. I think I might slow down and take it easy the next few days.
Here is another great song by Queen till I get back. Is it obvious that Queen is one of my favorite bands and Freddie Mercury is one of my favorite artists?

Jagged Alliance 2

This game was released in 1999 for the PC.
One of the best games of its type. It's a tactical role-playing game much like Fallout 1 and 2. Makes use of a gridded world map for travel and isometric tactical screen for encounters.

GOG

This is a great online distributor of games new and old. You can find almost anything there from Duke Nukem to Kings Quest to Master of Orion. They don't have every game ever made but they certainly have a large selection all at fair prices. They have forums and you can make a list of games to share with others or browse other peoples lists to get some ideas on what might interest you.
Some great things about GOG is they do not use any DRM so once you buy the game you can download it as many times as you need and install it on any computer you want. They also accept paypal as a payment option.
It is certainly worth checking out.
http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage

Queen- You're My Best Friend

Seems appropriate.
The magic that was Freddie Mercury(Farrokh Bulsara) singing one of his number one smash hits.
I hope everyone has someone else they can think of when listening to this song.
Did you know he was born in Zanzibar and his parents followed the Zoroastrian religion? He went to school in India till the age of 17.
Anyway enjoy.

Genewars

Here is another golden nugget from the days of Bullfrog productions. It was released in 1996 for the PC and is a real-time strategy game that includes terrain editing and genetic manipulation.

Movie Mondays

I was thinking about spicing it up a bit by sharing a movie that I like every Monday, what do you guys think?
To kick it off I will go with The Fifth Element.

UFO: Afterlight

This game was released in 2007 and is the third and last of the series. It's a walk in the park compared to the first game. This game is very cool because you can see effects you are having on the planets turning a red planet slowly green, melting icecaps and placing buildings.

 

UFO: Aftermath

This is a game from 2003 that is heavily based on X-Com. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Yes I love X-Com and games like it. One thing about this game is it can get ridiculously hard towards the end.

Small update

Yesterday I helped my parents move into their new house, mowed the lawn, cleaned house and various other things not related to video games. Today I have been watching all available episodes of Game of Thrones and trying to figure out just what the heck is going on. About all I can gather is that everyone wants everyone else dead but who is really pulling all the strings and to what end is a bit more ambiguous. Anyway it seems like a pretty good show and eight episodes are currently available with ten episodes in season one. HBO has already ordered a second season and it's not hard to see why.
Worth checking out. Also that is Boromir from LOTR....
http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones/index.html
I'm working on another game review that I will post some time today.

UFO: Alien Invasion

I think this will be the last indie game for now with a shift back towards good games you might not have played or even heard of. I have a few in mind.

Anyway UFO: Alien Invasion is a nice free to play project that has been in development for some time now. They have translations for MANY languages and the game has multiplayer functionality.

As promised

Ever want to play as the aliens in X-Com? Well you can!
"Ufo: The Two Sides is a multiplayer remake of the original game X-Com: Defence / Ufo: Enemy Uknown, developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse in early 90′.

Ufo tts recreates most of the original features, adding a couple of new ones, and changing ones that existed. However, the game recreates most of the features as faithfully as possible to maintain the unrivaled game-play of its predecessor. Although numerous other attempts have been made to recreate x-com defense, there is no (known to us) multiplayer game that lets you play full campaigns (that is both geoscape and battlescape). Project has been started on 1st of march 2009. There is no known date as to when it’s going to be complete.
All games from the ufo/x-com series are property of their owners (in 2005 rights have been aquired by Take-Two), the game is still being sold, therefore original game is not ‘abandonware’ and cannot be distributed for free legally. Presently Ufo: tts uses original graphics taken from ufo 1, making it impossible to be downloaded as a complete stand alone product. The crew is currently working on remaking all the graphics, so this will not be a problem in the future."

Current plan

Tying to make my blog look better and more professional so I have been going back and deleting old posts with little or no content. Plan to expand on a few of them soon.
I changed the theme and made my own header. Added some widgets. Started a BitVertiser account.
I will be changing my theme again to something more related to the theme of this blog, that's first thing on the list.
Plans for future blog posts center around a few more indie/no profit projects.
Stay tuned!

X-Com Apocalypse

X-Com Apocalypse is the third game in the series and the last to follow the same basic game design elements of the original. It was released in 1997 for the PC which was actually a bad time for gaming. The market was being flooded with garbage games and this only served to cripple any success of any actual good games. Also at this time Microprose, the producer and distributor, was having financial difficulties which led to this game being released prematurely and incomplete. Despite being incomplete it is still a very enjoyable game that can be played over and over perhaps without even realizing the fact.

X-Com, a closer look

If you hear someone talking or read something about X-Com chances are it is about this particular game.
It was released for the PC way back in 1994 and for the Sony Playstation in I think 1995.
It is the first game in the series and one of three to have the same basics for game style.

Spiderweb Software

Thought I might introduce some of you to another indie developer you have probably never heard of.

This small company was started by Jeff Vogel back in 1994. I remember picking up Exile III: Ruined World back in 1997. It was a dungeon crawler with graphics that you might see on the original NES but man it was fun and very addictive.
Here are a few screens.....lol

Xenonauts

There is a game in development. Some of you may have heard of it, most probably have not.
Xenonauts is a game that is heavily based off of the original X-Com games. It will have all of the same elements from turn-based ground combat to real time air combat to keeping the worlds nations happy/safe and funding you. If you have played any of the first three X-Com games then you will know exactly what to expect, if not then well......they are pretty cheap on STEAM.

An early ALPHA version of the ground combat viewer.

Final Fantasy 2 or Final Fantasy 4

Fourth in the series but released as 2 in the US.

A powerful knight must face his inner demons to become a beacon of shining light and save the world....and the girl. What could be better?

Carl Sagan

Some like him, some don't. But he does give you something to think about.

Theme Park for the Sega Genesis

Before there was RollerCoaster Tycoon there was Theme Park for the Sega Genesis and PC. This game was made by BULLFROG who made a lot of fun games back in the day. And in it you take control of a Theme Park what else? It is a scenario based game with the scenarios getting harder and harder as you go along.

P.T.O. Pacific Theater of Operations for the SNES

Another game with many elements. Turn-based combat.

DBZ on the GBA

Here are some story mode DBZ games for the Gameboy advance.

Legacy of Goku 1

Azure Dreams

A nice little game for the playstation.

You take control of a young man in a run down town in the middle of nowhere and you must find a way to take care of your family. So of course you take the path of your now missing father and become a monster hunter!

There are many elements to this game not just hunting and raising monsters. There is a town building element.
You can add and upgrade many buildings in the town and turn the run-down town into a thriving desert oasis.
And there is also a relationship element.

There are some mini-games as well.

Overall a very fun game.

Uncharted Waters New Horizons

A fun pirate/trading game for the super nintendo.

You take control of one of six characters with their own unique story altho they all intermingle to some degree.

From there you can decide what you want to be; a pirate with just a small fleet selling captured vessels and goods, a merchant with a vast trading fleet or a privateer with a large armada at your command.

There is also a LOT of exploration to do in this game, after all this is set in the age of exploration.

Overall it's a really great game for its time and is still quite enjoyable to play!

Breath of Fire 1, 2 and 3

bof1 for SNES

GBA

bof2 for SNES

GBA

bof3 for PSX