If you’re a fan of horror movies and the NES boxing classic “Punch Out”, then you’re going to love Mega Cats latest Frankenstein creation Creepy Brawlers! In Creepy Brawlers you take on the role of an underdog fighting his way to the top of the Underworld Championship. Square off against horror movie monsters like the wolfman, a clown on steroids, a slick vampire, a pseudo axe-murdering Jason Vorhees, and even Frankenstein himself! Performing well timed punches and dodging your opponents relentless attacks will be your only key to keeping your soul. Check out the trailer for Creepy Brawlers and fight your way to the top!
If your interested in more from Mega Cat, check out their pre-sale for Creepy Brawlers for the NES!
Today the doors to nostalgia are wide open and the classic Nintendo-inspired Android games are available at the touch of an Install button. Since the release of Super Mario Run on Android, the well-known game provider has set the goal to be one of the most powerful players in the mobile market. With visually stunning titles that take the players back to the console times, smartphones are now giving back the childhood games to the young at heart and not only. Since there’s no need to change cassettes now, here are the Top 5 Nintendo games available on Android.
Pokémon GO
With a downloads number of over 750 million and named „Best Mobile Game” by The Game Developers Choice Awards and “Best App of the Year” by TechCrunch, Pikachu and many other Pokémon have been discovered. Join Trainers from all across the globe as now’s your chance to discover and capture the Pokémon all around you. Get your shoes on and walk around your city. The smartphone will vibrate when it feels a Pokémon nearby. Stay alert and throw a Poké Ball or it might escape!
Complete your Pokédex and level up. The newfound skills will enable you to catch more powerful Pokémon.
Super Mario Run
Super Mario is here and faster than ever before! How to play? You control Mario by tapping the screen to make him pull off jumps, mid-air spins, and wall jumps. After you download the game, you will be able to play all the modes: World Tour, Toad Rally, Remix 10, and Kingdom Builder.
In the World Tour, run and travel through caverns, ghost houses, castles, and more to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser’s clutches.
With an interactive twist, Toad Rally lets you compete against your friends and challenge other players from all around the world in a quest for stylish moves.
You can create your unique kingdom with over 100 kinds of items in the Kingdom Builder mode. Gather coins and Toads to help you on your way.
Fire Emblem Heroes
If you are a fan of the world of gaming, then you surely know of The Fire Emblem Saga, Nintendo’s hit strategy RPG. Since its creation about 30 years ago, the game has morphed into an Android version that brings to the small screens battles specifically created for touchscreens and on-the-go gameplay. Now you can develop your Heroes’ skills and create your own adventure.
Chrono Trigger
If role-playing games are what makes you tick, then you surely miss the timeless Chrono Trigger. With a redesigned gameplay and an epic tale of time travel and adventure, this game still captures hearts and creates a new gaming generation. So, start the epic quest to save a planet’s future alongside Chrono and Marle.
Miitomo
Miitomo is something quite different from the games presented above, it is a smart-device app. This creation presents the Mii characters from the Nintendo’s Wii system but with a wide library of features to make your Mii resemble you. Customize your character and take it on a special social adventure.
Here’s a weird little story about an SNES cartridge that’s managed to stay in my possession for over 20 years now, despite the fact that it’s never given me an ounce of joy to fire up. Okay, that’s not completely true. When I set out to write this review, one word was on the forefront of my mind. “Scathing.” After all of the wasted hours, controller throwing, hair pulling, etc., I was really ready to rip this game a new asshole, as it had done to me (I’m the owner of a few assholes, most of them ripped by The Lion King for SNES). But the more I’ve played this game over the past week, the more I’ve gotten used to its inhumane tricks. I’ve developed a Stockholm like affection for its halfway decent artwork, its funky yet grating score, and its charming, educational vibe. But I might just be losing it.
The game in question is Captain Novolin. The Diabetes game.
A little backstory about this game; it was released for the Super Nintendo in November of 1992 from developers Sculptured Software and published by Raya Systems in collaboration with Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical giant. It was distributed through doctors offices to children diagnosed with type one Diabetes, a disease in which one’s body attacks the insulin one naturally produces, causing the individual to have to constantly monitor and control his or her blood sugar. I couldn’t find anything to confirm this, but I’m assuming that one had to purchase the Novo Nordisk brand of insulin, or Novolin, to receive this cartridge. Like I always say, nothing says world class gaming experience like a big ol’ advertisement from the pharma industry.
While Raya Systems unfortunately never got around to releasing Lieutenant Viagra, Captain Novolin was actually part of a series of four other educational SNES games. Furthermore, it was not the only one in the series about Diabetes. One of these games is entitled Packy and Marlon, and follows the story of two diabetic elephants on their quest to take their insulin on time and avoid refined foods. Nobody asked me, but could you choose a worse species to make the heroes of your Diabetes game?
The mastermind behind this atrocity, according to the pre- title credits, is a guy named Perry Rodgers. The internet has virtually nothing personal to say about Rodgers, but indicates that his post- Novolin years were pretty successful. He later joined up with Sony and has senior producer credits on several huge titles such as Final Fantasy VII, Spyro the Dragon, Gran Turismo, PaRappa the Rapper, and Double Dragon.
The reception of Captain Novolin was pretty unanimously bad. If you just check the wiki page, you might be mislead. The article alludes to a study which indicates “boys and girls were enthusiastic about the game and said it would be useful when telling their friends about Diabetes.” What isn’t mentioned is the fact that the game play is, and I quote, “unforgiving.” Gamefaqs users gave it a rating of 1.08 out of 5. In addition, Giant Bomb testifies “Captain Novolin is regarded as one of the worst games on the SNES.”
Ah, the humble title screen, where players get to endure the equally humble theme song entitled, you guessed it, Captain Novolin. Last digression (I promise), the score for this game was composed by one Kingsley Thurber, an unsung sorta- hero in the world of video game music up until 2000. Thurber started his career scoring low budget horror films. One of these films was entitled “Don’t Go Into the Woods,” and it’s theme song features Thurber’s ehrm… let’s say “iconic” style of vocal and keyboard performance. Have a listen:
Keeping this little ditty in mind makes listening to the Novolin theme, which I already thought was a bit off, all the more frightening. While it’s kind of groovy, the eventual 16- bit “guitar” solo isn’t so pleasing to the ear and will absolutely give you a headache if you listen to it too many times in a row. The rest of the score is evenly sprinkled with “wtf” musical moments, particularly during the
intermittent Diabetes trivia. While you’re presented with a question, what is basically the jeopardy theme song plays on loop, jumping in pitch each time it restarts. If you take too long to answer the question, you’re surely going the way of those Japanese Pokemon Green kids post Lavender Town.
Thurber’s career was also no bust after Novolin. He continued on to appear in the credits of a few popular titles, the most notable being Mortal Combat. The game begins. The premise is cute. Aliens have landed on Mt. Wayupthar and have disguised themselves as various junk foods. Blubberman, their overlord, who is looking to take over the earth. He decides the best way to do this is by capturing your random town’s diabetic mayor. Mayor Gooden has 48 hours worth of insulin, and you, Captain Novolin, must save him. Almost immediately upon agreeing, you meet a doctor who reminds you to check your blood sugar and take your insulin… because like the mayor, you have Diabetes. Apparently, everyone in this society has Diabetes.
Once you’ve checked your blood sugar and have given yourself a correct dosage, it’s time for an adventure. You quickly learn that Captain Novolin’s super power is dodging the sugary food. You don’t have any attack, although you can sometimes use a jump attack if your timing is nothing short of perfect. Along the way, you’re supposed to collect healthy foods specified by your doctor such as bananas, sandwiches, milk, and apples. However, eat too much of the healthy food, your blood sugar will go too high and you will lose a life. Ignore too much of the healthy food, and your blood sugar will go too low and you will lose a life. Even more-so than in in real life, it is VERY DIFFICULT to dodge the sugary foods that come your way, specifically the doughnuts and the cookies. The cookies actually wait for you to jump and then jump at the same time as you, sealing your doom. Captain Novolin’s sprite is awkwardly big and tall., which makes running under the foods when they jump even more difficult than jumping over them.
Four hits and you’re dead, three lives and you’re back to start. Oi.
Here’s some food for thought (pun intended). While this game certainly succeeds in teaching kids about how to manage their Diabetes with their eating habits, isn’t indicating that the ultimate consequence of failing is DEATH a bit too… much of a message for children? I’m not one to bemoan all violence in video games, but this next statement I will stand by– the last thing a six year old who has just learned they now require injections several times a day needs is a virtually unplayable game that they cannot make it past the first stage of. I would indeed rate this game as unplayable for children (my poor diabetic brother and I never got anywhere as kids), difficult for adults (my poor father only managed to get us a couple of stages in), and at the very least, annoying for experienced gamers.
The gameplay is pretty repetitive throughout the stages, but the graphics are cool, bright and colorful, and the scenery changes. For example, in the third level, after an advisory to wear supportive shoes (diabetics have poor circulation), you get to drive a speed boat. However, the premise and controls remain, jump, dodge, jump, dodge, die, jump… up until you fight Blubberman, whose weapon is, of course, pies.
Defeat him, and the mayor is yours. And I suppose since Blubberman can’t even succeed in holding one diabetic mayor out of the many non diabetic mayors the earth contains, he decides to reign in his aliens and head on home. So ends Captain Novolin, which, despite everything, I admit I feel something positive for. What about you? Have you recently had the pleasure of dusting off this cartridge, blowing into it until you can’t blow no more, and popping it into your yellowing SNES? Do you play it only with a smile and take deep offense to my criticism? Do you play it with a scowl as you attribute all of your bald spots to it? Comment away!
What’s more difficult than shooting an invisible target? The answer lies in the unique gameplay of Invisigun Heroes, which conceals all heroes—including your own—in a stealthy game of PVP mayhem designed to make you think before you shoot.
At first glance, Invisigun Heroes seems difficult to master. Each player-controlled character must navigate a single-screen arena in a battle to out-stealth and outsmart your opponents—all while your characters are cloaked in an invisibility field. The game is tricky at first, but the smooth controls and balanced gameplay make it easy to learn and get comfortable with your abilities as you play.
How to play
Here’s how it works. Up to four heroes will be spread out in four corners of a map, with their locations revealed, until the battle starts. You can shuffle around the arena as the clock counts down. Once three seconds pass and you all go invisible, the fun begins.
You can use several methods to uncover a hero’s location (or give away your own). For one, your hero will briefly show up on screen after firing a shot or activating your unique ability. You can also track other players’ movements through various environmental cues, like rustling bushes, splashing water, and footprints, forcing you to respond quickly to any changes in your surroundings.
How to win
In order to win a match in Invisigun Heroes, you’ll need to keep track of all these moving parts while using your guns and abilities judiciously. You usually can’t go in guns-a-blazing without getting yourself into trouble. If you get lost, a quick shot can re-situate your character on the screen, but it can also give away your position to others. The game challenges you to think on your feet without over-relying on any one of its mechanics—whether it’s stealth, bluffing, shooting or using a special technique—to win your matches.
The game may sound frustrating, and it is. That’s part of the fun—especially when you’re playing with friends. The game is so fast and hectic that, inevitably, your screwups will make you smile or laugh more often than they’ll induce you to ragequit.
Invisibility is somewhat of an equalizer. Once they learn the basics and get past the initial roadblocks, every player has plenty of opportunities to try different tactics and use the environment to their advantage (or get caught in new traps they didn’t see coming). With several battle modes and dozens of varied maps to stage your battles, you’ll also find plenty of variety to keep you entertained.
Characters
The game’s heroes are its shining stars, as they should be. Their endearing character designs make it difficult to pick favorites, and their unique abilities offer plenty of potential for addictive gameplay in several different play styles. Whether you’re dashing across the arena, stomping the tiles around your hero, or creating portals to catch your enemies unawares, you’ll find plenty of ways to keep things interesting.
Local and Online Multiplayer
Invisigun Heroes features both local and online multiplayer, as well as a single-player challenge mode for those who prefer to play solo. Since the game’s release earlier this year, it seems to have had trouble with its online matchmaking, perhaps due to a dwindling online player base. Since multiplayer is really the way to go with this game, players may prefer to play locally with friends or online using a private code.
The matchmaking may be a major pitfall for some, and the nature of the gameplay may be too vexing for others, but Invisigun Heroes has several outstanding qualities as a PVP stealth shooter. It calls for vigilance and subterfuge without the slow, methodical pace of traditional stealth games. It challenges your reflexes and your observational skills while offering endless potential for fun. To cap it all off, the eye-catching graphics and colorful art style hold plenty of appeal for new players and veterans alike.
Final Thoughts
All in all, Invisigun Heroes is perfect for parties or jamming on the couch with your friends. It is currently available on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux with a promise of cross-platform multiplayer on major consoles at a future release date.
A sub-generation of gamers came into the world as Generation X began to fade and before the Millennials took center stage. In the transformative years between the mid-to-late 1970s and the early 80s, Xennial kids discovered the nation not with tablets and smartphones, but on monochrome monitors with the lingering threat of virtual dysentery.
The Oregon Trail! I bet you didn’t realize that you were learning life lessons when you went to school libraries and spent countless hours playing one of the toughest sims ever created. Here’s 10 hard-earned truths I picked up along the way, and a sentimental bonus for those who make it to the proverbial promised land (the Willamette Valley!).
It’s OK to Fail
The first time you set out on the trail you probably bought a ton of bullets and food before leaving town, only to discover that a pair of oxen and a wagon full of supplies makes for a very slow trip. Until the axles break, then you’re dead in the water for who knows how long. Well, not always in the water. Sometimes dead in the field, or on the road, or even at the local fort where they don’t need bullets or have any extra spare parts.
The first thing the game teaches players is that it’s OK to fail. Seriously. Armed with this well-earned information, begin anew and swap some of that arsenal and all the beef jerky for some key essentials. Now go out and fail again! The more you try, the more you learn. This title was “Nintendo hard” when Nintendo was still heavily focused on playing cards and before Grand Theft Auto’s success taught players that death doesn’t matter (or at least that hospitals charge very little for resurrection).
More Horsepower (Or Oxen)
Pack on the yokes of oxen. Again, seriously. If you’ve got the funds, a full 9 yokes (18 oxen and a dozen roses) can get you from the starting point to the finish line. Kids who grew up with the Oregon Trail likely also played Crosscountry USA and learned to live on the road. They also got old country music stuck in their heads from time to time.
More horsepower, bigger engines … the more you put into something the faster you’ll get it done and with fewer headaches. Seriously, make it bigger, faster and as mean as 18 oxen and you’ve got a real hit with the Oregon Trail generation. Just don’t take any fewer than half a dozen of the beasts along, or you’re in for a bad time.
Pack Extra Clothes
Extra clothes, why? Are little SALLY and FART going to get sick without them? (They should never have let 7-year-old kids name the poor adventurers.) And yes. Very sick. Cholera sick. Dysentery sick. Or a thief will steal the clothes instead of your oxen. Randomly. Let him have them.
You never know when you’re going to need extra clothes, okay? And if a thief, or an airline baggage handler, should make your suit for your job interview disappear, you’ll be glad you packed smart. You don’t learn that on the Death Road to Canada!
Keep Spares Handy
Pick up spares. All the spares. Shoot for at least two spare parts of anything that might break on the trail before you head out. You never know.
Admittedly, most of the people on that TV show who have a mountain of stuff in their houses may fall into this generation. But you never know when the glass shelf on your microwave might break and you’ll need the one you kept from the last unit. Or just how many planters you need for next spring. Or how you came across 12 different bottle openers and lost 3 can openers this year. They’ll turn up when you need them!
Leave Early
Departing in May or June gives you the best chance to win the game. Departing in July means you will die if there’s an early snow. Leaving in August? We’ll call that a learning experience. Leave early. You can always waste time; you can’t always get it back.
Whether you’re headed to the movies with friends or on the way to work, leave early. The Oregon Trail isn’t the only place you’ll run into potholes or broken axles, even if you manage to avoid the cholera on your daily commute. Leave early and enjoy the chill when you get there.
Hunt the Biggest Game
Also known as “rabbits are worthless.” Don’t shoot at rabbits. They are tiny. Their meat is tiny. Little FART can’t cut his teeth on rabbit. Twenty or so rabbits equal a deer. Deer are slower, bigger, and two fills you up for one hunting trip. Two deer equal a bear or buffalo. Even slower, even bigger. All things die with one bullet. Don’t shoot at rabbits.
A wise man once advised us not to sweat small things, but the Oregon Trail taught us that rabbits are wily critters who will tie your gun in a knot and make you shoot yourself. Or maybe that was Bugs Bunny. Still, don’t waste time and energy chasing the little, quick things that don’t pay off. Especially if the proverbial bears go down at the same cost. Shoot bears, not bunnies.
Avoid High Water
Even the earliest version of the game lets you test the water before you go trying to float your wagon across it. High water bad. Low water good. Taking the ferry is always the safe bet.
The cliche says, “Look before you leap.” The Oregon Trail version is something more like, “Check the water level before BUTT drowns alongside two oxen, six spare parts and 69 bullets.” And, if the water’s too high, hire a professional. Sure, you might float it. Or you might end up with a one-way ticket back to Missouri to become a banker.
Trust the Natives
In one of the original game’s key challenges, you decide if you want to trade some of those extra clothes for the secret to safely navigating the Snake River. When the natives ask if you want to know how to survive a river that flows less straight than a Slinky untangled and twisted up again 12 times, you say, “Yes!”
I’ve seen the Snake River. You say yes. Trust those who have gone before. For a lot of people, it’s hard to avoid the “us vs. them” arguments. Oregon Trail kids know that every trip down the trail has its own experiences. Trust the people who have lived through those experiences. Learn from their mistakes to avoid having to make some of your own. Or drowning in the Snake River.
Expect the Unexpected
FART broke a leg. SALLY has dysentery. A thief stole seven oxen. A snake bit BUTT. You just traded your spare parts for extra bullets and then broke two axles. And you still haven’t reached the first river crossing. That’s the Oregon Trail!
Long before Bioware was receiving accolades for intricate plots with unexpected twists and some of the best gaming website designs, the Oregon Trail was blazing the … way by training us to expect the unexpected. Nothing ever goes perfectly as planned. No wagon trip from Missouri to Oregon was ever uneventful. Make the most of it and move on. You knew these things would happen, just not when.
When All Else Fails, Be a Banker
When the misadventures of FART, SALLY, BUTT and the rest of the clan finally reach keyboard-smashing levels, you start over. You decide to take the easy road. You know it will cost you half or more of your score; the game told you so. But now you’re a banker. You’ve got 18 oxen, that dozen roses, 2000 pounds of food, three spares of everything, a Rambo film’s worth of bullets and two wardrobes full of clothes sure to appeal to the finest of highwaymen and the wisest of native guides. Because when all else fails, you can be a banker.
Playing at a disadvantage is hard. You learn more and get more points because you struggle more. When it gets to be too much, take what you’ve learned and apply it to a new game. Go ahead and start as a banker. Reinvent yourself. Then pack up your BUTT and the rest of the clan and get to Oregon. That Willamette Valley isn’t going to settle itself and you’re getting tired of writing “SALLY died here. Thanks to BUTT and FART” on tombstones. Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to start fresh.
Bonus: Life’s a Game
Gamification and the advantages of online learning are all but taken for granted by the generation that grew up with the internet available at all times. The Oregon Trail taught players much the same lesson.
We named our settlers and grew to know and love them over countless hours of SALLY’s dysentery and BUTT’s broken legs (all seven of them). We even stopped making FART jokes after a while. The game taught us to care, to learn from mistakes and to grow as players. I warned you about the sentimental part, but isn’t that what life’s all about? Well, that and gaming.
