Vault 1541: preview

Showing posts with label preview. Show all posts

Saturday, March 16, 2024

X-Men Video Game Previews & Reviews

During the '90s I read a lot of X-Men comic books and watched the animated series Saturday mornings on Fox. Disney is reviving the show, titled X-Men '97, on March 20th so I decided to put together some X-Men coverage leading up to its debut. I'll have at least three posts, maybe four, that cover some video games, television appearances, and toys. I scanned quite a bit of coverage from video game magazines but I'm only using some of it in this post.

The scans include a GamePro "ProView" of The Uncanny X-Men (NES), a preview and review of X-Men (Genesis), a preview and review of X:Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES), a preview of X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Genesis), a review of X-Men: Children of the Atom (PlayStation), and reviews of the computer games X-Men and X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants. For Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) reviews I place the review next to the writers that appear on the first page of the column to show who wrote each one. There is also editing on the reviews that appear across multiple pages and sometimes you'll see review scores and or screenshots for other games as well.

GamePro - March 1990

EGM #44 - March 1993 EGM #46 - May 1993

EGM #65 - December 1994

EGM #65 - December 1994 Next Generation #40 - April 1998

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - September 1990 & June 1991

Monday, March 11, 2024

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden Previews (Electronic Gaming Monthly)

Akira Toriyama
April 5, 1955 - March 1, 2024
(Image Source: Jiji Press)

As I was flipping through my gaming magazines in search of Mario and X-Men articles this past weekend, I came across previews for Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden and its sequels. Although I've seen a little of the anime and tried some of the Dragon Ball video games, I don't know a whole lot about Dragon Ball Z other than its significant impact on anime and pop culture. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama recently passed away. He began working on manga (Japanese comic books) in 1978 and launched the Dragon Ball manga series in 1984. Other than his writings and drawings being used, I'm not sure if he was involved with these particular games. During his career he did provide character designs for other video games too, such as Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and the Dragon Quest series. Of course, Toriyama-san wrote and illustrated other manga as well, including Sand Land, which is receiving its first video game adaption next month.

These previews are all from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), appearing in its coverage of Japan's Super Famicom games. All three released in Japan and Europe but not in North America for the Super NES. More recently the first one was available as a special pre-order bonus for Dragon Ball FighterZ on Switch and the second game was a pre-order bonus at Amazon for Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden on Nintendo 3DS.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden (EGM #51 - October 1993)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 (EGM #57 - April 1994)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3 (EGM #65 - December 1995)

Friday, October 1, 2021

The Tokyo Toy Show: The Games of 1991 (Electronic Gaming Monthly #14)

January 2022 UPDATE: I'm getting a bit unorganized here and I just found that I posted these scans twice. It's not just a repost as I did scan all the pages a second time without reazling I had already posted the same thing in 2018. I'll leave them both up but if you already saw the old post there is no reason to read this one too. Sorry!

This 10-page article is actually about the 1990 Tokyo Toy Show but as it states, the games were often released in Japan first back then so Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) is assuming the games it is writing about here would appear in the U.S. in 1991. Before the annual Tokyo Game Show which began in 1996, videogames appeared at this toy show and since the scans are from a video game magazine, there aren't any toys being shown, unfortunately. I'm posting this now as the 2021 Tokyo Game Show kicked off yesterday, and like E3, it is an all digital event this year.

Monday, June 21, 2021

Alex Kidd

Alex Kidd in Miracle World has been remade with new levels by independent developers known as Jankenteam and will be published by Merge Games on June 22nd digitally for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One/Series X, Switch, and PC. Physical copies for the console versions hit stores on June 29th. Before Sonic the Hedgehog was the face of Sega, Alex Kidd was as close to a mascot as Sega had. In 1986 Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars released in arcades (1988 on SMS) and Alex Kidd in Miracle World landed on the Sega Master System (SMS) and eventually became a pack-in title for the console. I've played The Lost Stars on the YouTube channel and I'm not much of a fan of that one. Being based on an arcade game it is short but it's also quite simple. Another of his SMS games is Alex Kidd: High-Tech World (1987), which starts as an adventure game before it moves to a side-scrolling sequence that is quite difficult. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World (1990) for the SMS was his last starring role and I'm not too familiar with it, though as the title suggests, it features elements of Sega's ninja game Shinobi. There is also the Japan-only Alex Kidd: BMX Trial (1987) on the SMS, or Mark III as it was called overseas.

Ahead of the blue blur's 1991 debut Alex did make an appearance on the Sega Genesis in 1989. Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle is a side-scrolling platform game that also has rock, paper, scissors (aka Janken) matches. For this post I've dug up what I could find on any Alex Kidd game in my magazines and I'll have another post later in the week with an old Miracle World strategy guide.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - Feb. 1989

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - July 1989

Alex Kidd: High-Tech World

Electronic Gaming Monthly #2

Alex Kidd in Shinobi World

GamePro - July 1990

Sega Visions - Oct/Nov 1990

Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - May 1990

Sega Visions - June/July 1990

Game Player's - March 1990

Game Player's - Feb. 1990

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

The Hawk Has Landed

In 1999 Activision published Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (THPS) for the original PlayStation console and it was an instant hit. Developed by Neversoft, the game received a sequel just one year later aptly titled Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Arguably the two best skateboarding video games at the time of their release, it heavily influenced the video game scene in the early 2000s as numerous other extreme sports received video game adaptions. Over the next 20 years the series would receive many more sequels and spin-offs but this Friday Activision is going back there where it all began as it releases the first two games rebuilt from the ground up in a remastered collection for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It's developed by Vicarious Visions which has worked on the series previously, often responsible for the handheld equivalents. While all the original content with new graphics is here, there are also new tricks, secrets, challenges, and online multiplayer modes. Create-A-Skater and Create-A-Park have been upgraded too and much of the original soundtracks will be in the game as well, plus 37 more songs. This post isn't exactly about the remaster though and if you're familiar with the blog you probably know that magazine scans are next.

I went through my video game magazines and was able to find some preview and review coverage of the first game and two reviews of the second. Most of the scans are from the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine and Next Generation (NextGen), with a preview from PSM and a N64 review from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM). The Dreamcast magazine is over-sized as is at least one of the Next Generation issues so the scans got a little cut off on my scanner but all the relevant text is here.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater