- og Xbox
Gunvalkyrie
Oh man... a love/hate affair. Gunvalkyrie was made by Smilebit and published by Sega, the game looks awesome, has great sound, a nice story, all good, right? Well, there's the small matter of controls which are unusual to say the least. You are wearing some sort of rocket suit in the game which lets you fly through the air and attack enemies from above, quickly change position or reach higher spots. You first have to fly up vertically and then use the left analog stick for steering. Clicking the stick will boost the engine so you can do left/right somersaults or quickly fly forwards or backwards. Your main backpack rocket only works for a few seconds so in order to stay airborne, you have to constantly use the boosters. This is where things get difficult for me, the left stick needs a bit of force to click which often leads to stick waggling which in turn lets your character fly around like a drunken bee and end up falling down into a horde of angry giant spiders or other nasty things. To top it all off, you have to control the crosshairs of your active weapon with the right analog stick, all the while doing all sorts of nasty flying tricks with the left one. Feels like playing drums, really complicated. If it works it's incredibly rewarding taking out one enemy after another with well-placed shots but that's a rare thing, most of the time I'm stumbling around, bouncing into walls and quickly getting overwhelmed by tons of enemies that flock in for a quick kill.
I own this game for 22 years now but have never finished it. This is what I'm trying to do now but first I have to do a lot, and I mean a whole lot of practise runs to get the controls down, maybe I have to use another stick that has a lighter stick click, dunno. By the way, my original savestate for the game on my Xbox hd is from December 28th, 2002... funny how time flies when you're battling with some shitty controls.
Spikeout Battle Street
And here we have og Xbox problem child #2. This Sega beat 'em up came out in 2004 and was another day-one purchase for me, I had read about the game beforehand and really wanted to give it a try. In a nutshell, the game looks good and plays quite well but its difficulty level is just out there, it's one of the trickiest 3D beat 'em ups I've ever played. The camera also isn't the best. Still, I come back to the game time and time again, there's something to it which drags me back and makes me play it in the faint hope that I would beat it one day. Or, as some online reviewer so aptly put it: "Look, kids- if Spikeout were a movie, the year would be 1987, Michael Dudikoff and Caroline Munro would star in it, Richard Lynch or Henry Silva would be the main bad guy, it would run on cable six times a month, and you'd be glued to the tube every single time it came on just for the action scenes and ridiculous ending."
OutRun2
The og OutRun was a really big thing for my friends and me, our fav arcade had a sit-down version and we went there at least twice a week to play it, that and the other Sega superscaler games like Space Harrier and Thunderblade which they also had.
Fast forward to 2003, a simple article on a gaming website made me giddy like a little girl when I read that the release of the official sequel to OutRun was due any day now. On release day, I got up at 5 in the morning and went to a local EBgames store, fully expecting girls in bikinis, palm trees, shiny red Ferraris and life-sized cut-out OutRun standups... however, confetti parade it was not, I arrived at the shop ten minutes before it opened (needless to say I was the only one), then a sleepy young guy shuffled along, opened the shop and first thing he did was switch on the coffee maker. I felt a bit like an idiot when I realized that the thrill of anticipation made me think everyone would love OutRun just as much as me and couldn't wait for a proper sequel... haha.
An hour later, I was back home playing the game and fell in love with it. It was all I could have hoped for, and more, the game looks and plays so good it's nothing short of amazing, and it's still immensely playable even after all these years, which couldn't be said about all 3D racers. If you haven't played OutRun2 yet (is this even legal?), you should do it NOW and try to beat my record (rightmost track, 4:35 mins., Ferrari F40).
Dynasty Warriors 3
You don't hear people talking about the series alot, at least not here. This part is my fav of the ones available on og Xbox, IMO it has just the right balance between tactics and fighting. The later missions can be quite tricky, some of them (I think it was the one where you have to escort a carriage) I had to repeat like 20 times to advance but it's not really frustrating since controls and the whole fighting mechanics are more or less flawless, except perhaps for some slight camera issues. It's that just-one-more-try thing that keeps you going. It's fun to rack up big combo scores and plough through hordes of enemies or literally knocking a general off his high horse. The engine is easy to get into and most importantly fun to use. Great game for an hour or two.
- GameCube
Mario Kart: Double Dash
What can I say, just a wonderful game, my friend Tom and I played it like crazy, first on GC and later on WiiU with MK8. I never was a huge Nintendo fan to begin with but this one here is top-notch flawless multiplayer fun that just never gets old, wish me buddy would still be here and we could battle it out again. Last results was 674 (him) vs. 588 (me) wins, at one time many moons ago we started a tally on a chalkboard that hung in his living room so beware when I see you again, my friend, I still have the chalkboard and I'm not gonna spare you, sukka!
F-Zero GX
Simply the bestestest racing game on GameCube, the game is pure craziness with its ridiculous speed and brain-twisting tracks. Balls-hard, addictive like crack, mindblowing visuals and sound, a real trip. The Story mode alone will keep you busy for a long time, and you know you're in for something special if takes you dozens of tries to even beat the early levels in Story mode but you don't mind because it plays so well and just screams perfection.
