Saints of Virtue
Posted on March 14, 2015
| 20 minutes
| 4151 words
2022 Update: The 1.0.0 version of SaintsX has been released. Check out the website and download the patch here.
It’s the quiet end of a working day, and I just Googled “Saints of Virtue".
Yes, that Saints of Virtue. The Christian first-person shooter from 1999 that is sometimes mocked, sometimes derided, but mostly forgotten. I haven’t played the game all the way through in years, yet here I am running a search and scrolling through the results.
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480p Orta / GunValkyrie on Xbox 1.6
Posted on May 15, 2014
| 3 minutes
| 612 words
If you’re into the original Xbox, then you probably know that Microsoft released several different hardware revisions over the console’s lifespan. These revisions were released under the covers, with no outside differences between, say, a 1.2 console and a 1.6 console. But the variations are meaningful, impacting both longevity and reliability. CRTGAMER over at Racketboy wrote up a pretty thorough rundown of the various revisions. If you want to know more, that’s your introductory course.
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Saints of Virtue Luminous Assets
Posted on March 14, 2014
| 2 minutes
| 371 words
Definitely sad to see that Saints of Virtue – one of my childhood favorites – is about to bow out from the internet. I was surprised to see it reissued for digital download a year or two ago, but it looks like that was just a brief revival. I used HTTrack to save a backup of the site since Internet Archive often misses files. Email me if you want a copy.
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Heavy Nova
Posted on January 2, 2014
| 7 minutes
| 1396 words
(Originally published at Sega-16.com)
You tear the parcel open. The action rips the veil of time and space, and a distant refrain of the Japanese Mega CD BIOS lofts to your ears. The jingle transports you back to December of 1991, to a distant shop in Shibuya where you imagine gamers of a bygone era held the same game you hold now. You run a careful finger across the hand-shaded cover art and smile.
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Blast Wind
Posted on October 23, 2013
| 12 minutes
| 2537 words
(Originally published at HardcoreGaming101.com)
Retro gamers call almost any obscure game a cult classic. Unlike most of Technosoft’s catalog, Blast Wind hasn’t amassed enough fans to earn that title. A search of the usual forums produces just a handful of cobwebbed discussions of the game. There are no fansites, obsessive strategy guides, or detailed retrospectives. But the game hasn’t quite been forgotten, either. Technosoft’s reputation keeps Blast Wind afloat as a curiosity among enthusiasts, and a small print run drives prices high on the secondary market.
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Modern Streets of SimCity
Posted on May 20, 2013
| 8 minutes
| 1601 words
2021 update: I highly recommend you try Streets of SimCity X. The following instructions are not the best option these days.
Okay, well, any fan of the game knows that ‘running’ is a relative term. The game was always prone to crashing, even back in the day on 32-bit Windows 95 and XP operating systems. But if you’re reading this then you probably know that some hot Streets action is worth a few “unrecoverable errors”, as the familiar in-game popup goes.
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Guardian Force
Posted on August 12, 2012
| 13 minutes
| 2589 words
(Originally published at HardcoreGaming101.com)
Success began its life in 1978 in Tokyo, under the guidance of its founder Takato Yoshinari. Since then, the company has either developed or published a huge number of games for every platform from the Neo Geo Pocket Color to the Nintendo Wii. These days, Takato Yoshinari is still the president and the company seems to be doing well with its own particular niche of DS and mobile games.
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Christian FPS Games
Posted on February 20, 2012
| 24 minutes
| 5106 words
(Originally published at HardcoreGaming101.com)
Any discussion of Christian video games must inevitably start with Wisdom Tree. Wisdom Tree was a group of former Color Dreams employees who developed and self-published a series of unlicensed religious games for the NES, SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy. After the dawn of 32-bit technology, Wisdom Tree shifted their focus to edutainment games for the PC – a space they continue to operate in to this day.
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The Story of Thor (Oasis) Series
Posted on September 6, 2011
| 23 minutes
| 4804 words
(Originally published at HardcoreGaming101.net)
Context Perhaps it’s a bad rap, but the Genesis/MegaDrive is not remembered for its RPG library. Despite being the birthplace of such classics as Phantasy Star IV, Shining Force, and Lunar, Sega’s 16-bit hardware built its name with platformers and secured its legacy with rollicking action games. By 1994 this was a weakness that Nintendo was fully exploiting in Japan with a strong Super Famicom RPG lineup spearheaded by the wildly successful Final Fantasy series.
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