I Just Got a SNES

16-bit buddies

So... I just got a SNES (mini). I got Mega Man X and Super R-Type with it. Mega Man X was a pretty obvious pick to get at some point, and i felt like getting a shmup as well. Early impressions are that Mega Man X is fantastic, with excellent controls and great gameplay (thank you Captain Obvious). Super R-Type is hard, but then again shmups are generally fairly challenging.

NHL Slapshot- A Follow Up

If my article about playing Slapshot at PAX wasn't enough to convince you that it's a very good game, then I'll say a quick word about the single player modes. The Peewee to Pro mode starts you off in peewee hockey as you take your created character moves through his hockey career. You earn experience in 3 categories, which are offense, defense, and athleticism. In peewee mode, you put all of these points into the basic skills of offense, defense, and athleticism. However, as you move up the ranks in your career, more options in these categories are available for using your experience points in.

You can also earn "boosts" by achieving various statistical goals, such as 3 assists in a period, or a plus/minus of +60 over a season. These boosts provide bonuses to your skills (and in some cases take points away from one skill while giving big boosts to other skills).This adds a nice strategy element to the game, as you can supplement use of experience points with boosts to create your style of player.

The season mode is a typical season mode, and is fun as expected.

Check us out on YouTube!

We have a YouTube channel now, thanks to our Retro Editor John! Currently we have videos from PAX Prime 2010, there is some exciting stuff there!


As a sneak peek:

You can tell I'm excited! John captures it on camera.

Rich's Photos from PAX

I didn't take many photos at PAX, but I did take a couple pictures of the swag I got.

T-shirts and other swag.
The zipper one is a Little Big Planet 2 shirt, and the one in the upper right is a Brink shirt. The Guild Wars 2 bandanna is on the bottom left.

An amazing chalk drawing of Metroid: Other M.

Posters. The Brink posters are pretty badass.
I like the one on the left middle best, personally.

PAX 2010: NHL Slapshot

My surprise hit of PAX this year was definitely NHL Slapshot. In case you are unaware of the game, Slapshot is the Wii game with the hockey stick peripheral. Before playing it I was quite skeptical about the game, thinking it was another gimmicky peripheral. But as I scored quickly on a beautiful one-timer from Patrick Kane to Jonathan Toews, I realized that I really like Slapshot. I played several more games over Saturday and Sunday, getting John, Peter, and George to play in the process.

The hockey stick controller is a comfortable size and feels natural when you are playing. The nunchuk and WiiMote are in good places on the controller and contribute to the very good controls, which I will explain now. The control stick is used to move your player, and the A-button passes or changes players. The Z-button is turbo, C is used to dive (to block shots), and the B-button does a spin move. You can hold the B-button and manually deke as well. The rest of the controls use the WiiMote’s motion control. Wrist shots and slap shots are controlled as you would expect, and checking is performed by pushing the hockey stick forward, as if you were checking someone. Overall, the controls feel very smooth and become intuitive after about 15 seconds of playing.

I didn’t get to see the different game modes, but you can play in 4 different levels (from Peewee to Pro) with different teams and settings for each (for example, Peewee was 3 on 3). The game features an extensive career mode in which you start out in the Peewee league and work your way up to a spot on an NHL roster. You can also go through a season as your favorite NHL team.

What I want to emphasize is that the game has fantastic controls and some very intense and exciting gameplay. The hockey stick controller makes it even more fun, and the game has quickly moved up near the top of my list of games I’m excited for.

Image:
http://www.thegadgetguycolumn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/EA-Hockey-comes-to-Wii-with-NHL-Slapshot.jpg