Lord Spencer's Gaming (and other stuff) Blog

Side-scrolling shooters are perhaps one of the easiest genres to measure. In theory, all its games are similar enough that there is no need to bother with the bottom sitters for a different experience, since there wouldn't be anything majorly different to begin with. What that leaves games that are not Contra or Metal Slug (by far the genre's A list) is attempting unique twists on the formula and semi-innovations. In its day, Super Turrican 2 gained a reputation for its revolutionary 3D cutscenes and sharp graphics. Neither aged as well as the more graceful works of the SNES. What is left is a game that you wish was something else by the time you finish its first half. #93: Super Turrican 2: Year: 1995 Genre: Run & Gun Publisher: Ocean Developer: Factor 5

This is going to be one of the more difficult reviews I had to make, because The Adventures of Batman and Robin is a game that is at once brilliant in design and terrible in value. It poses the now-raging question of quality vs. length. Ultimately, I think ABAR is one of the best Batman games despite its flaws. However, it fails to reach the levels of a classic SNES great. #94: The Adventures of Batman and Robin: Year: 1994 Genre: Action Platformer Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami

Final Fight has an old reputation in the brawler genre; it has been a constant presence in arcades and is even represented in Capcom Vs. Marvel by the Burly Mayor Hagger. I am yet to play any other Final Fight game, but from what I saw from this first one is that this lofty reputation is totally undeserved. Starting from the limitations of the brawler genre, to the limitations of the actual game itself, Final Fight is proving to be one of the few SNES games I disliked in my current attempt to review the top 100. #100: Final Fight: Year: 1990, 1991. Genre: Beat 'em Up Publisher: Capcom. Developer: Capcom.

    I remember having a lot of fun times playing the SNES in my childhood, but I did not play buy about 10 to 15 games, and many games that I played I couldn't go far into owing to my inability to read basic instructions in English. As I grew up, I played more SNES games that came my way, as well as others released on other platforms. Due to the sheer quality of those titles that I played years later (such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger) and those I remember playing ( Donkey Kong's Country, Super Mario World ), I was always curious about the quality of all those titles I did not play. Three years before starting this review series, IGN released a list of their top 100 SNES games . Reading that list, I got excited and wanted to play all of them. However, I realized that just playing them wouldn't be enough. I wanted to study that list, and hence decided to review most games on the list. I say most because I decided I wouldn't review: Games I already played (doe...

The reduced cost of making games on the PS1 invited a deluge of licensed games for anything from mainstream movies such as Die Hard to niche anime such as Serial Experiment Lain . As such, it is not surprising that one of the hottest anime franchises of the 90s had its own licensed game. What is surprising is that, contrary to our logical expectation, the Ghost in the Shell game was actually good. Even though it could have satisfied fans purely through the returning cast of voice actors and the high-quality anime cutscenes, the game introduced some innovative gameplay mechanics that were consistently fun. In what is both a big praise of the game and a nod to its biggest flaw, I wished there was more of it at the end. #A6: Ghost in the Shell:- Year: 1997. Genre: Action, 3rd-Person Shooter. Publisher: Sony, THQ. Developer: Exact.

Back in the early 1990’s, I think my first console was actually the Sega Genesis. My uncle had an SNES, and my cousins had an SNES, but I had a Genesis for some reason. I only had two or three games on the console; one of them was Sonic Pinball . For some reason, I didn’t get any more games after that. Instead, I asked my parent to buy me Nintendo’s console and never looked back. Simply, having multiple family members with the same console meant we could share the same games. When I first joined Destructoid, I was in the middle of a personal quest to review all of the best SNES games that I did not play before. In essence, to review the SNES by reviewing its library. After finishing that review series, I decided I would do a similar one for the Genesis ; a console I did not give enough of a chance before. The console design was never the best, and those game pads were terrible As such, I found a list of top 100 Genesis games at Retro-Sanctuary.com and decided to review the games that ...