appstore
You know, I have a history of WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS disliking zelda games since I was a WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS little kid. Maybe part of it WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS is because I had all sega stuff growing up, but WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS going back to link's awakening once I WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS finally acquired a taste for zelda and saw everyone say this game is WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS one of the best in the series only to discover WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS that it plays it's little fucking "you cant do this yet" message every WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS fucking WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS time you even so much as touch the WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS thing you can't use yet that I just cant help but think my old point of view was just a little bit WOW THIS LOOKS PRETTY HEAVY YOU WONT BE ABLE TO LIFT IT WITH JUST YOUR BARE HANDS justified.
1998
catch me waving this game at the "there's no difference between 30fps and 60fps" people like it's a revival church and I am trying to save their souls
1996
Self-evident vibe triumph. Impossible to play this and not feel, be it soothed with the music or overwhelmed at the hard courses. To take golf and make sure it's thrilling for the duration is a hell of a trick.
2024
Shootemups were a genre that earned a parody as scornful as bullet hell games. As the genre wore on, they became less games about shooting things and more games about collecting things, be they lives, powerups, medals, or whatever else. There was ambiguity about how to push the genre forward which left everything primed for Cave to come in and do what they did, making the shooting part of shootemups ancillary to tracing lines with a pen through prismatic fields of dots. And now, sitting at the opposite end of 20 years of that shit, we've come to a fork in the road. One side of the fork is Vampire Survivors and it's ilk: the full lobotomic removal of the agency of play, replaced by the stockpiling of slot machine assets to take you to deeper Nevada brigs. Devil Blade Reboot shines gloriously on the road less travelled.
I'm not going to claim Devil Blade is the best example of what directions are left to push shootemups. That is ZeroRanger. What Devil Blade is, is a punk rock volume reminder of The Point. It asks, "Do you know what's fun about flying a ship full of bullets and bombs on a progressive metal suicide mission?" And it answers before anyone can think of a joke or a denial: "EVERYTHING."
The fixation on The Point informs the whole task. The ship is called The Shining. No model number. No time for revisions. All that counts is that it kills, and there are kills to be done. The enemy talks back to you in terms of a God's punishment. You are to play the role of Resilience, the role you should've been playing this whole time. The ship is loaded with two guns, and describes them only by function: Narrow and Wide. You have bombs. You can also get shields. Bombs do what it sounds like: kill everything on screen. Shields do what they sound like: Protect you, once. Bombs also have the benefit of giving you a shield when you use them. All that matters is that everything dies, and Resilience demands they die first. If you kill absolutely everything in a stage, you get a bonus, because That Is The Point.
In wisdom, the developer understands that rewards stacked on top of rewards are amplified, and in desire of removing the baubles of old, the player increases the score simply by playing like a fucking lunatic. The closer The Shining is to its prey, the higher the multiplier, from 2x to 4x. And every #x adds up to a meter, shown as a raw digit. Once that digit crosses 100, a beast snarls and the word "BERSERK" lights up. Those 2x kills become 10x, the 3x become 15x, the 4x become 20x. A small white bar begins emptying, but once the bar empties, it doesnt end berserk mode: it simply takes 100 off the value. So, if you can push the value above 200, when the timer ticks over, surprise! It's still Berserk time. And the way you do that is to Kill, Recklessly, Constantly. That Is The Point.
Or, you can convert one of those bombs, rare and precious as they are, into a Boost by holding it. I like to believe I'm shoving the bomb into my fucking mouth and eating force. It shoves the meter to 500%, increases your damage, and puts a giant countdown clock around your ship that you couldn't ignore if you tried. You want to gamble? Here you go. Don't waste it. Waste THEM. THAT'S THE POINT.
A lot of interactive entertainment and digital toys are going to come out this year. Devil Blade Reboot is a Fucking Video Game. Maybe as those markets start crashlanding, love-fueled little ships like this will start launching their own suicide missions into hearts obsessed with the grotesque parodies of unloved gods. There is a point to being alive, and it's to Be Alive.
I'm not going to claim Devil Blade is the best example of what directions are left to push shootemups. That is ZeroRanger. What Devil Blade is, is a punk rock volume reminder of The Point. It asks, "Do you know what's fun about flying a ship full of bullets and bombs on a progressive metal suicide mission?" And it answers before anyone can think of a joke or a denial: "EVERYTHING."
The fixation on The Point informs the whole task. The ship is called The Shining. No model number. No time for revisions. All that counts is that it kills, and there are kills to be done. The enemy talks back to you in terms of a God's punishment. You are to play the role of Resilience, the role you should've been playing this whole time. The ship is loaded with two guns, and describes them only by function: Narrow and Wide. You have bombs. You can also get shields. Bombs do what it sounds like: kill everything on screen. Shields do what they sound like: Protect you, once. Bombs also have the benefit of giving you a shield when you use them. All that matters is that everything dies, and Resilience demands they die first. If you kill absolutely everything in a stage, you get a bonus, because That Is The Point.
In wisdom, the developer understands that rewards stacked on top of rewards are amplified, and in desire of removing the baubles of old, the player increases the score simply by playing like a fucking lunatic. The closer The Shining is to its prey, the higher the multiplier, from 2x to 4x. And every #x adds up to a meter, shown as a raw digit. Once that digit crosses 100, a beast snarls and the word "BERSERK" lights up. Those 2x kills become 10x, the 3x become 15x, the 4x become 20x. A small white bar begins emptying, but once the bar empties, it doesnt end berserk mode: it simply takes 100 off the value. So, if you can push the value above 200, when the timer ticks over, surprise! It's still Berserk time. And the way you do that is to Kill, Recklessly, Constantly. That Is The Point.
Or, you can convert one of those bombs, rare and precious as they are, into a Boost by holding it. I like to believe I'm shoving the bomb into my fucking mouth and eating force. It shoves the meter to 500%, increases your damage, and puts a giant countdown clock around your ship that you couldn't ignore if you tried. You want to gamble? Here you go. Don't waste it. Waste THEM. THAT'S THE POINT.
A lot of interactive entertainment and digital toys are going to come out this year. Devil Blade Reboot is a Fucking Video Game. Maybe as those markets start crashlanding, love-fueled little ships like this will start launching their own suicide missions into hearts obsessed with the grotesque parodies of unloved gods. There is a point to being alive, and it's to Be Alive.
I feel like this is the work of adults who love talking about the new cartoons that have good messages for kids. There's like a one-to-one correlation between people who think this game is powerful and that Inside Out is a GOATed movie because now my kid tells me they feel purple sometimes.
1993
What a divine thing to upload to this website. Good job.
Growing up, I wasn't allowed to have a Game Boy because my dad was a computer engineer and thought Nintendo's designs were lacking. Instead I, and my cousins, had a handful of these monstrocities, including Mortal Kombat here. I dont remember which of us owned it (I know for sure I owned the Mortal Kombat Trilogy one) but looking at this reminds me of summer vacations.
Growing up, I wasn't allowed to have a Game Boy because my dad was a computer engineer and thought Nintendo's designs were lacking. Instead I, and my cousins, had a handful of these monstrocities, including Mortal Kombat here. I dont remember which of us owned it (I know for sure I owned the Mortal Kombat Trilogy one) but looking at this reminds me of summer vacations.
1999
Poems about machines. I still play every game like it could become Quake at any second, and I can't afford to have had those skills go to waste.
1996
The angriest game I have ever seen in my life. This is a spiritual successor to Strider released by the creator of Strider after getting fired from Capcom, and it is entirely about corporate greed trying to kill your soul and being empowered by a hateful god to ruin everything. The vibe is just as toxic as could be, and it is truly something to behold.
2011
The people who love this game would fuck a corpse and just haven't been given the right opportunity.
2017
In my opinion, Jeff Minter's finest work. It hits the sweet spot of his methods of game control and his overwhelming aesthetic, and in a stroke of genius co-opts one of the biggest urban legends in videogame history to create a game that, if it had released in 1980 or whatever, legitimately could have killed someone that wasn't ready to see what games were going to become after pong. This is game is the payoff to years of being a fan of Jeff Minter's games.
2016
A fine action game with one of those soundtracks that proves my "nerds hate music" theory, as I have known people where this was the main thing they listened to in a year. Djent exists. You'll be okay.
2021
Invasive in an inspiring way. This game helped me feel ready to die.
1989
If only one video game would survive the ravages of time after the collapse of society, odds are really good it'd be Tetris. It's a game that feels as fun as a parlor game like dominoes, but it's only really possible as a video game.
2021
I don't care about rich people! You can't make me!
1986
Growing up as a sega kid gave me a lot of resistance to ever trying this series. That resistance was also informed by my times playing Link to the Past at my orthopedist's office. Later, when I had nintendo systems, I started trying Zelda games and found myself bouncing off the modern games pretty hard. Why this series took off didn't click until I played the NES games, and they have the one thing that most of the modern games do not: they feel dangerous. Riskless adventures make for boring stories. Tiptoeing through dungeons with a heart and a half can leave a scar in your nervous system big enough that anyone could develop the pathology that'd lead them to buying Skyward Sword.