It's hard to imagine that for a while the zelda series was one decent game and one pretty awful one. To be fair, that was the course for a lot of NES games. For some reason a lot of developers didn't just iterate on their first game so there were quite a lot of dodgy sequels with interesting takes ...

Hello! I never really know what to write in these 'introduce yourself' threads. It's all too easy to come off as a self-reverential waffler! Anyway, here we go. I'm an Irish man and have been living in South Korea for past five years or so. . If you want to pop down to Japan and want a tour guide I...

I ended up picking up Zelda Phantom Hourglass on Christmas Day for cheap thinking "you can't have a Christmas without zelda." I've now just received a late gift in the post of the legends of localisation book about the first game - it's absolutely lovely object and really interesting so fa...

Yeah, those enemy gauntlets can be a bit of a slog. They only happen a small handful of times though and I think the first is probably the most difficult.

I picked up Shantae and the Pirate's Curse in the Wii U sales the other day, and have played a little bit of that. So far I'm a bit torn on it, in a similar way that I was with Risky's Revenge. I love a lot about it. The platforming feels god, and I love the visual style, and the soundtrack is part...

A lot of RPGs suffer from either waking up with amnesia, waking up and talking to your mum and half the town for an hour before anything happens or both. Not that there's anything wrong with talking to your mum. Final Fantasy VII's start really stands out in the way it sets the tone for the game and...

The first 20 minutes of Indiana Jones is a perfect introduction. It teaches you who the character is, his motivations, his strengths, his weaknesses, his relationships with others. It does it all in a seamless action packed sequence in which you never feel like you are being fed information. You are...

I'm currently going through Shantae and the Pirates Curse and it's pretty great. It's a bit Metroidvania except with distinct dungeons rather than one huge map. The graphics are done in a distinctly retro style but one which has clearly had a lot of love and care put into it. Rather than 8 bit we of...

Bastion is a dollar on the iOS store. Anyone had any experience playing it on the iPhone? I don't know anything about it other than it's highly recommended. EDIT:I see there is an actual cane and rinse episode about it, but because of the spoiler heavy nature of the discussions I don't like to liste...

Just wait until they show Cait Sith.

I have a feeling Cloud won't be riding dolphins in this one.

There are some pretty nice 3DS and WiiU deals on the euro eshop this week. http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/12/nintendo_download_17th_december_europe I think I'll pick up fractured souls and shantae for the 3DS. If you have already got them the switch force games are great though really short s...

I've a few weeks off without my nearest and dearest also being off so I'm looking forward to not going outside and indulging in some single player games. I have a nice set up for gaming with a Wii connected to a projector but my apartment is pretty small so it's not a permanent fixture. I'm looking ...

Something that has always bugged me in Zelda 2 is that through the whole game when you die you are sent back to the start except at the very last temple. It's a welcome but baffling act of clemency - why now? Is it just because the last temple is so long? Seeing how the famicom disc system version w...

Shadow Complex HD is free at the moment for PC!

https://www.epicgames.com/shadowcomplex/

Though do be warned - the download link is for their client rather than the game.

I honestly feel for Konami's PR department. Konami have gotten a lot of criticism this year some of it probably unwarranted but a lot of it very justified. The PR team must head to work every day, see the decisions being made and think "come ooooon, throw me a bone here." They have to spin...

Inbetween games I popped on Contra 3 meaning to just have a little go and ended up playing until the end. It's not a long game by any means but because I played it a lot as a kid (though it was Super Probotector at the time) it's a warm and comfortable game. Stepping back though it's pretty amazing ...

I really want to like Zack and Wiki more than I do but the controls sometimes aren't as responsive as they need to be and coupled with "dying means you have to repeat a lot of puzzles to get to the same point again" means that when the game gets harder and the levels get longer it becomes ...

The adventure of Link is an interesting but flawed game with its main flaw being its difficulty. It is not simply that the game is too hard, but more to do with the way it handles your failure. I always found that I had to redo a whole lot of stuff to practice on the bit that was actually giving me ...

The music from Ocean Horn by Uematsu is also great. Here's a short video promoting it while he wears a "Will sell wife for beer" T shirt.

I'm interested in Monster Hunter 4 or Majora's Mask for the 3DS Euro editon. I'm in Japan so if you have any matters of import let me know or even amiibo let me know (we have the nifty famicom ROB here too.)