Gary

"Pinball of the Dead"

Pinball week continues with this: a pinball game based on the House of the Dead series. A GBA exclusive, it's a bit of a cult classic for the handheld.

I'd love to see Sega take another crack at this one.

22 hours ago | [YT] | 92

Gary

"Lula Pinball"

Pinball week continues with this one! The "Lula" series is composed of several games of an "adult" nature - and someone decided that it needed a pinball entry. And here it is!

1 day ago | [YT] | 104

Gary

"Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball"

Pinball week continues! This is a a somewhat obscure PS2 game - but a pretty darned excellent pinball game! I only discovered this recently - and was very taken by it. Developed by Sony Japan, it's a pretty wild ride (the screenshot doesn't do it justice) - with a lot of different mechanics and tables at play. It really leans into the fantastical side of things - with more of an emphasis on spectacle than realism - but if that's what you are into ... it's a blast.

2 days ago | [YT] | 91

Gary

"Demon's Tilt"

Essentially a modern version of Devil's Crush - but cranked way the heck up.

Not only one of my favorite pinball games, but one of my all-time favorite games. This would be one of my desert-island choices.

(And yes, I'm aware of the follow up - but we're saving that for another post)

3 days ago | [YT] | 122

Gary

From the April 1994 issue of EGM - a surprisingly unimpressive print advert for a a top-tier franchise...

4 days ago | [YT] | 98

Gary

"Yoku's Island Express"

Pinball week continues with one of my favorite games of all time!

If you haven't heard of it, it's a...metroidvania/pinball game. You control a dung beetle that has to deliver mail across an island. it's 2D - in that you can move left and right - but cannot jump; instead, there are jump pads littered around the landscape which behave just like pinball flippers.

The game is absolutely adorable and brimming with character. More importantly, the pinball physics are also spot on - after a while, you don't even notice the absence of a jump button any more!

One of my favorite games!

4 days ago | [YT] | 92

Gary

This print advert from December 2007 of EGM.

I admit - while Free Radical Design has a lot of fans, I've never considered myself one of them. Still, they were quite popular - their TimeSplitters trilogy is adored by many gamers!

Their last major released title was this one - Haze. It had a very troubled development, and when it released to poor reviews (and sales) - that effectively killed the studio. In 2021, Free Radical Design was reborn (with its original leadership team!) as a subsidiary of Embracer Group...before it was shut down again in 2023. Ouch.

I did eventually play Haze in 2022 - and while it wasn't quite as bad as the reviews at the time made it out to be - it wasn't great. Still, at least the advert is actually pretty impressive!

5 days ago | [YT] | 117

Gary

Are these appropriate outfits?

Well, the game *is* called "SG/ZH School Girl Zombie Hunter", so the question is if these outfits are appropriate for either school girls, or zombie hunters. Anyway, we posted a short of this - so if your friend wants to see the game in action, they can go here: youtube.com/shorts/5TZHKYeyMj0

5 days ago | [YT] | 130

Gary

Pinball week starts now!

5 days ago | [YT] | 61

Gary

A beautiful print ad for the first PC Dune game, from Computer Gaming World magazine in 1992.

The first Dune game isn't quite as fondly remembered the second one, which is I think a bit of a shame. While I do love Dune 2, the first Dune game was a decent (if a bit simplistic) strategy game. Plus, if you had the CD-ROM version, watching full motion video clips (from the '84 movie) was pretty darned cool.

As an amusing side note, on one of our PlayStation 2 videos, we show a clip from the PS2 version of "Frank Herbert's Dune" - which was an early 2000 attempt at making another Dune game; some rather unhinged commentor accused us of creating a fake clip because "the movie wasn't even released until 2021".

6 days ago | [YT] | 105