Featured, Music

Journey: Restoring Rock & Roll’s Rarest Arcade Game

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Ah yes, the Journey arcade game from 1983—proof that someone at Bally Midway stared into the heart of rock ‘n’ roll and said, “What if we turned Steve Perry into a pixelated superhero with a jetpack?” In this fever dream of corporate synergy and neon bravado, you control the actual members of Journey—each represented by hilariously realistic digitized faces slapped onto cartoon bodies—on a mission to recover their stolen instruments across five mini-games. It’s like Mega Man, if Mega Man’s enemies were groupies and his powers were “bass solo.”

Each band member gets their own personal level, from dodging barriers with a flying drum set to platforming on conveyor belts while trying not to look like a floating head on a stick figure’s body. Once all instruments are recovered, the game climaxes with a full-blown concert scene—complete with pixelated fans losing their minds while Journey rocks out. Oh, and it plays real samples of “Separate Ways” on 1980s arcade sound hardware, which sounds like a fax machine trying its best to sing. It’s baffling, bold, and beautiful—a perfect time capsule of when arcade cabinets, classic rock, and utter chaos collided in a haze of synth and denim.

Featured

Derek’s 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000

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Faceball 2000 on the Game Boy is what happens when someone looks at the gritty rise of first-person shooters and says, “What if instead of guns and gore, we had floating smiley faces and pure confusion?” You play as HAPPYFACE, a yellow orb of emotionless optimism, wandering a maze that looks like a wireframe dentist’s office from a cyberpunk fever dream. Your goal? Blast other floating emoji-like enemies into oblivion before they do the same to you. It’s like DOOM, if DOOM was designed by someone who had only ever played Pong and once saw a sphere.

Somehow, this plucky little Game Boy cart managed to cram in a 3D first-person experience using approximately four pixels and the processing power of a microwave. Each enemy has a distinct face, ranging from “mildly annoyed” to “existentially over it,” and they glide silently through the maze like ghosts of MSN Messenger past. The cherry on top? The game supported up to 16-player multiplayer via link cable—because clearly the Game Boy was designed for LAN parties in 1991. In the end, Faceball 2000 isn’t just a game; it’s an experience—a surreal, minimalist art piece disguised as a shooter where every kill feels like you’ve just disappointed a sentient emoji.

Featured, Q & A

The Most SURPRISING Game We’ve Still NEVER Played? 😮

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The Spork Guy from Patreon asks: What would be considered the most surprising game you’ve still never played before?

John Linneman: https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalFoundry
Gemma: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGebs24
Gaming off the Grid: https://www.youtube.com/@GamingOffTheGrid
Rad Junk: https://www.youtube.com/@RadJunk
John Hancock: https://www.youtube.com/@johnhancockretro
Retro Maggie: https://www.youtube.com/@Gamermaggie
Game Sack: https://www.youtube.com/@GameSack

Featured, Metal Jesus Likes

Graphical tricks in classic video games – Your questions answered!

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Here’s a list of graphically impressive retro games—with a side of snark and nostalgia:

🎮 1. Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 1994)

“Rendered so hard, your SNES needed a juice box after.”
Rare flexed its silicon muscles with pre-rendered 3D sprites that looked like someone stuffed a Silicon Graphics workstation into a banana.

🕹 2. R-Type (Arcade, 1987)

“Scrolling left to right never looked so aggressively biomechanical.”
This game made you question whether Giger was moonlighting as a sprite artist. Also: lasers. So many lasers.

🦑 3. Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis, 1992)

“Because nothing says cutting-edge like an emotionally haunted dolphin.”
Wave effects, lighting, parallax scrolling—and existential dread? Ecco had it all.

🕯 4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, 1997)

“Come for the vampire hunting, stay for the unnecessarily fancy capes.”
2D never looked so lush. Every hallway looked like Dracula’s interior decorator went to town with a velvet fetish.

🚀 5. Star Fox (SNES, 1993)

“Polygons so sharp they could cut your lunchables.”
The FX chip said “screw pixels” and gave us wireframe dreams rendered in what felt like 4 FPS, but we loved every choppy second.

🏙 6. Shadow of the Beast (Amiga, 1989)

“The graphics were so good, nobody noticed the game was impossible.”
16 layers of parallax scrolling because someone clearly had something to prove.

🌈 7. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)

“Time travel, techy wizardry, and sprites with more expression than most actors.”
Akira Toriyama’s art came to life like a pixelated anime fever dream, and the backgrounds were works of art.

👾 8. Metal Slug (Neo Geo, 1996)

“Beautifully animated chaos. It’s like Looney Tunes joined the army.”
Every explosion was lovingly hand-drawn by someone who really wanted you to enjoy blowing stuff up.

💀 9. Doom (PC, 1993)

“Yes, it ran on a potato. Yes, it still slapped.”
Those pseudo-3D corridors and pixelated demons were revolutionary. Also, 90s kids’ first intro to heavy metal and Hell.

👁️‍🗨️ 10. Out of This World / Another World (Amiga/SNES, 1991)

“When minimalist polygons punched you right in the feels.”
Rotoscoped animation and cinematic presentation that made you think, “Am I playing a game, or watching a French art film about loneliness?”

Want a ranking based on how hard they flexed their consoles? Or ones Claude might enjoy watching with you in a few years (minus the demon hordes)?

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Kill the Chainsaw Sisters in 1 second | Resident Evil 4 Remake

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Defeat the Chainsaw Sisters in 1 second: Resident Evil 4 Remake. Pretty clever!

Resident Evil 4—the game that asked, “What if survival horror had an insane amount of roundhouse kicks?” and changed the industry forever.

You play as Leon S. Kennedy, a man whose hair is impossibly perfect for someone who spends most of his time dodging chainsaws and fighting cultists in a grimy Spanish village. His mission? Rescue the U.S. President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, who has mastered the fine art of getting kidnapped and yelling “LEEEON!” at the worst possible moments.

Gone are the slow, tank-controlled zombies of old—this time, the enemies are faster, smarter, and way too into agriculture (seriously, why does every enemy have a pitchfork?). The villagers, infected with Las Plagas, don’t just shuffle around groaning—they full-on sprint at you, throwing hatchets, chanting ominously, and occasionally sprouting tentacle-heads just to keep things interesting.

And let’s talk about the Merchant, the game’s true MVP. This gravel-voiced entrepreneur appears everywhere, somehow dragging his entire arsenal of guns and rocket launchers through haunted castles and underground labs just to say, “What’re ya buyin’?” Legend.

Resident Evil 4 also gave us the most action-movie moments ever crammed into a horror game—outrunning a giant mechanical statue, suplexing cultists, a knife fight on top of a table, and an entire section where Leon rides a jet ski because, at that point, why not?

It’s over-the-top, ridiculous, and absolutely one of the best games ever made. 10/10 would suplex a monk again.

Metal Jesus Likes

First Look at the NEW Phantasmagoria 2.1 version!

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Paul and Daniel will unveil the new and improved version of Daniel’s brilliant Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle Of Flesh fan game (currently titled Phantasmagoria 2.1). This game allows our fans to virtually join the Wyntech family and participate in its continued development.

Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh—the sequel that nobody really expected, and even fewer understood.

Where the original Phantasmagoria was a gothic horror story about a haunted mansion, the sequel decided, “Nah, let’s get weird.” Instead of ghosts, you get corporate conspiracy theories, BDSM hallucinations, psychosexual trauma, and a pet rat named Blob (who, let’s be real, is the real MVP of this game).

You play as Curtis Craig, an office worker who’s having a bit of a rough time—what with the terrifying visions, dead co-workers, and the nagging feeling that his employer might be up to some very unethical science experiments. The gameplay is classic ’90s FMV (full-motion video), meaning you’ll watch actors awkwardly deliver lines while clicking on random objects in the hope that something will advance the plot.

The tone is all over the place—one minute, it’s psychological horror, the next it’s workplace drama, then suddenly, boom, surprise dominatrix romance subplot. And let’s not forget the truly bizarre twist ending that makes you go, “Wait, what?”

Was it good? Debatable. Was it a ride? Absolutely. Phantasmagoria 2 is one of those games you don’t just play—you experience it, like a fever dream brought to you by late-’90s Sierra, back when they were just throwing money at FMV like it was going out of style.

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Ranking and Reviewing Mindscape NES games

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JohnRiggs – Mindscape published many games that people have heard of, some ported from computer, some ported from other companies. Heres a look at all 20 games from Mindscape for NES.

Mindscape—the gaming company that was like that one friend who almost made it big but kept tripping over their own shoelaces.

Founded in the early ’80s, Mindscape tried its hand at everything: educational games, adventure games, simulation games—basically, if there was a genre, they threw something at it to see if it would stick. Sometimes, they struck gold (The Chessmaster, Prince of Persia ports), and other times, well… let’s just say they had a talent for making games that made you wonder, “Who asked for this?”

By the ‘90s, they had their hands in everything from DOS classics to weird licensed tie-ins (The Terminator, Mario Teaches Typing—yes, that was them). But as the gaming industry grew into a high-stakes blockbuster business, Mindscape, bless their hearts, kept plugging away with a mix of hits, misses, and “Wait, they made that?”

In the 2000s, they did what many game companies do: get passed around like a hot potato in a series of acquisitions before fading into the gaming history books. Today, they live on in the memories of ‘90s kids who remember booting up Reader Rabbit or getting inexplicably frustrated at Madeline games.

RIP, Mindscape—you were weird, and we kind of loved you for it.

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Champ Games 2024 Homebrew GAME RANKINGS for the ATARI 2600!

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The Atari 2600 was the OG console, the granddaddy of gaming, and the reason your parents thought “video games” meant Pong. Released in 1977, it was basically a wood-paneled time machine that transported families straight into pixelated bliss—or chaos, depending on who got stuck with the unresponsive joystick. With its faux-wood trim, the 2600 looked less like a gaming console and more like it belonged in your dad’s rec room next to the shag carpet and avocado-green sofa. But don’t let the retro aesthetics fool you—this machine was a beast in disguise, packing 4 whole kilobytes of memory. That’s barely enough to save a Word document today, but back then? Pure wizardry.

The games were simple yet maddeningly addictive. Who needs a cinematic cutscene when you have a square pretending to be a tank in Combat or a rectangle heroically rescuing princesses in Adventure? And let’s not forget the iconic controllers: single-button joysticks that felt indestructible until you got mad during a Pitfall! session and threw one against the wall. Atari 2600 games had something for everyone, whether it was dodging missiles in Missile Command or, uh, experiencing the infamously terrible E.T., which taught us all an important lesson: even classics can have their flops. It was crude, charming, and occasionally frustrating, but the Atari 2600 was the spark that ignited the gaming industry. Without it, your PS5 would just be a really expensive Blu-ray player.

Retro Gaming with a Heavy Metal Soundtrack