Retro Spectives

It's that time of year again!  For most of our episodes, our format is identical - we play a game, then discuss and review it.  Once a year, however, we take a break from the format at christmas time for our Mailbag episodes.  These are some of our favourite episodes to do - we take a break from the norm for some offbeat discussion about games both old and new. Thank you to everyone who submitted...

Ensemble Studios blew the world away with Age of Empires way back in 1997.  It took a different approach to the RTS formulae than Westwood or Blizzard, and was rewarded heavily for it.  Being able to advance your entire civilization's technology level was a heady drug, and balancing the varied needs of your economy with a well rounded army was strategically engaging.  After releasing a sequel and...

Blood, first released in 1997 by Monolith Studios, was the middle child of the big three Build Engine games, sandwiched in between Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior.  Its combination of gory horror-inspired visuals combined with action filled FPS gameplay was a huge hit at the time of release, but has slowly faded in many people’s memories.  Both Quake and Half Life loom larger in most people’s memories...

Metal Gear Solid 2 was easily the most hotly anticipated game for the Playstation 2.  The first game had blown everyone away, and the jaw-dropping graphics of previews combined with the quality of the animation in cutscenes seemed almost too good to be true.   Luckily for fans everywhere, MGS 2 appeared to live up to its wild expectations, getting almost universally glowing reviews.  It seemed tha...

Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 was a staple of many people’s PC desktop screens back in the early 2000s.  Nestled in between the big hitters like Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2 you would find this odd game that straddled the line between simulation and video game.  Developed by Infogrames Interactive, it saw Chris Sawyer continue the work he put into the first game, with more rides and tools to tweak your park t...

It feels like Metal Gear Solid barely needs an introduction.  First released in 1998 for the playstation, it launched Hideo Kojima into the western spotlight and has been credited as a foundational game in the stealth genre.  It combined a cinematic presentation with a larger than life cast of villains that somehow never broke through how seriously the game seemed to take itself.  There was an att...

In the 90’s turn based strategy and tactics games were everywhere, but by the turn of the millennium the RTS genre was stealing its thunder.  So it was a surprise to most when in 2001 Advance Wars seemingly came out of nowhere and presented a tight and refined dose of tactics to the Western world.  Its jovial and enthusiastic tone won over a lot of people, but what really stood out was just how ro...

Power fantasies are the norm for video games.  We play them to blow off steam, to escape into another world where we can let our worries drop away.  But Pulse Entertainment wanted to do things a little differently when they developed Bad Mojo in 1996.  They wanted to put the player in the little brown shell of a cockroach.    You play as Roger Samms, who, on the verge of embezzling a million dolla...

Luigi’s Mansion was the cornerstone of the Nintendo Gamecube’s launch in 2001.  It sold more copies than any other launch title, received positive critical acclaim, and occupied prime place in every promo gaming machine in gaming and electronic shops everywhere.  The game promised a charming take on a haunted mansion, quite unlike Resident Evil that had come before it. You take control of Luigi, s...

Unreal was the Crysis of its time.  It pushed PCs to their absolute limits, with its advanced shader effects and enormous levels.  It featured AI that was far beyond the stilted and simplistic enemies that people were used to.  It built an alien world that managed to straddle the line between the more abstract early era shooter and what the build engine games were doing.  And it was all wrapped up...

When Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers first released in 1993, it was not a crack commercial hit.  It did however instantly earn itself widespread critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its dark and disturbing story, foreboding atmosphere, and incredible voice acting.  The game brought the setting of 90’s Louisiana to life, with all the colonial baggage and real life voodoo history integrated...

Arkane Studios was founded with a dream: to create a sequel to the highly revered grandfather of immersive sims Ultima Underworld .  Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t quite secure the rights to the IP, and instead decided to make a game that was evocative of the original in every way.  Enter Arx Fatalis , a game that was released to widespread critical acclaim, but unfortunately for Arkane suf...

Puzzles are like crack cocaine for their very special audience.  Whether it be a crossword, a logic problem, or even a riddle, unravelling them shoots a heavy dose of endorphins directly to the brain.  It is therefore no surprise that Professor Layton and the Curious Village was such a resounding success upon release, taking advantage of the portability of the 3DS before smartphones were a given f...

Relic Entertainment has a long history of innovating in the RTS space.  Both Company of Heroes and Dawn of War are much beloved and respected titles that could hold their heads high even when compared to other goliaths like Warcraft, Red Alert or Age of Empires.  But in many ways it was their very first game as a company that pushed the conventions in a weirder direction than anything else.  This...

Before Todd Howard’s promises about the climbability of mountains was Peter Molyneux and Fable , a game which promised a level of interactivity never seen before in an RPG.  Have children (that could continue your legacy when you died), plant a tree and see it grow, and dynamic rivalries with other heroes - Fable was going to have it all. Instead we got something far simpler in scope and ambition....

The original Pathologic has long been regarded as a cult classic.  Obtuse, frustrating, boring and unfriendly, it nonetheless captured people’s imaginations with its densely woven storytelling and mystical dialogue.  It was a game that came at the art form from a completely different direction from what everyone else was doing, but was ultimately limited by its fairly simple gameplay. Pathologic 2...

When we started this podcast nearly 4 years ago, we did so with a clear goal in mind.  We wanted to play, review and critique games of the past from a perspective free of nostalgia.  As the gaming industry grew, games changed, for both better and worse - and it is worthwhile to examine all those creaky and dust covered titles to see what has been forgotten.  Sometimes mechanics truly are outdated,...

The Metroid games are certified classics for a reason.  Super Metroid , in particular, is responsible for inventing an entire genre, with a shockingly tight design that puts all other games of its era to shame.  The 90s came and went without seeing a 3D metroid game, but in 2002 we finally saw the release of Metroid Prime.  Could it possibly capture the magic of what made the 2D games great? Well,...

When Resident Evil first came out in 1996, it wrote the book on what 3D survival horror was meant to be.  Fixed camera angles, a creepy atmosphere, tank controls and bizarrely themed puzzles - these were now synonymous with the genre, whether you liked it or not.  And for the most part, people liked it very much indeed, with its mainline sequels (and a couple of the spinoffs) sticking to and refin...

The Chronicles of Riddick, when it first released in 2004, was the definition of mediocre sci-fi schlock.  Riddick, played by Vin Diesel, came across as a generic edgelord, and it seemed to lean into special effects and spectacle over anything more substantial.  It's a direction that didn’t play well with critics, nor with the fans of the previous entry, Pitch Black .  So it was to everyone’s surp...

Gamefreak , on the rarest of occasions, takes a break from toiling away in the Pokemon mines.  And when they do, sometimes they strike gold.  Such was the case with Drill Dozer , first released in 2005 to mostly favourable reviews.  As time ticked on, however, many began to look back on it with increasing fondness, and it's not hard to find those who consider it one of the best games ever released...

Mega Man X, first released in 1993 and developed by Capcom, is a certified Super Nintendo classic.  Widely considered to be one of the strongest entries in the entire expanded Mega Man franchise, it took the classic formulae of running and gunning and turned it up to 11.  The graphics were more colourful and detailed, the music got bumped up a notch, and the arsenal available was wider than ever b...

Peter Jackson made history with the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but as far as he was concerned he was just getting warmed up.  A mere two years later saw him remaking King Kong , with the marketing department splashing his name all over the place so there could be no doubt that this was indeed a Peter Jackson film. Like with the LOTR hack and slash games, a video game was developed a...

Blade Runner is one of the most exceptional and influential works of science fiction to ever grace the silver screen.  It brought the works of Phillip K Dick to life from its opening shots of geysers of flame erupting in the shadow of the Tyrell Corporation’s Egyptian skyscrapers.  The technology might be fantastical and the world transformed, but the people of the city were the same, and Blade Ru...

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, as the ninth game in the series, did not radically alter the formula that made the series what it is.  Take one pinch of tactics, mix liberally with some RPG mechanics and bake together into a cohesive fantasy world, and at the end of it you’ll have a Fire Emblem game.  It did, however, introduce some new features and changes that did make it stand out. Released for...