Monday, October 30, 2017

NIGHTS into dreams...for Sega Saturn (1996)

Original printed ad featured in volume 4 issue 9 of Gamefan magazine.


The best 3D game that does not a feature a Mario character


Few games have been so well-received as “NIGHTS”, released by Sega for the Saturn in 1996, just when 3D was starting to dominate the video game market. Nintendo had of course Mario 64 and Sony’s Playstation was starting to gain ground with the 3D crowd, but the majority of titles that featured this graphical style were horrible. NIGHTS changed that forever. Of course 2D was still very popular and the SNES was still going strong (Yoshi’s Island was released in 1995; Super Mario RPG in 1996).

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Shadow of the Colossus for PS2 (2005)


Original ad featured in the December 2005 issue of EGM (no. 198).
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An unrivaled masterpiece

To say Shadow of the Colossus changed the way adventure games are played would be a huger understatement. More than 10 years after its original release, there's still nothing that matches the sheer beauty of the 2005 product. Seeing that The Last Guardian (2016), the true spiritual successor of "Colossus", got mixed reviews from critics and fans alike, Sony decided to produce a remastered version of the now classic for the PS4 which will be launched sometime in 2018. So how does the artwork for the original stand up today?  

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance (1990)

Original ad featured in the November 1990 issue of EGM (no. 16).
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Terrific artwork, terrible game

Heralded as one of the worst games ever for the NES, this side-scrolling action RPG featured terrible graphics and gameplay, yet decent music. It was a ported to various different systems, including DOS, but never gained any traction on Nintendo’s console. Having said that, the box art and publicity material was absolutely beautiful.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for GameCube (2005)


Original advertisement published in EGM no. 198 (December 2005)
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A three-dimensional skin to a classic tactical RPG

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for GameCube was released to critican acclaim in North America back in 2005. It’s a tactical RPG very much in the same style as the legendary Final Fantasy Tactics of the late 1990s. Solid game with equally solid artwork, as you can see above.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Mechanized Attack for NES (1990)

Original advertisement published in VG&CE (June 1990)
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A ho-hum game with a decent ad

Little can be said about the game you see above. It was a first person view mode shooter in the same vein as Operation Wolf. Both of them were successful arcade games (they even had fake rifles to round out the experience), but lost quite a bit when ported to the NES.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Demon Sword for NES (1990)


Original advertisement published in VG&CE (June 1990)
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Yellow and bland publicity


Demon Sword for the NES, released in North American in 1990, was a typical side-scroller as so many other of the era. It featured floaty gameplay, repetitive stages and very little sense of control. Graphics and music were meh, as were the sounds. In consequence, the ad for the game was also mediocre.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Golgo 13: The Mafat Conspiracy for NES (1990)


Original advertisement published in VG&CE (June 1990)

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Adults-only game for your Nintendo with beautiful artwork

Japanese and American gamers are well known for having different aesthetic values, specially in video games. Most of those differences were molded by Nintendo themselves, since they held a rigid censorship system for games sold in the Western world. But some games were able to pass the big N’s censors and left the original Japanese game practically unchanged. One such instance in Golgo 13 (1988) and its sequel, which you see here.