Retro Review: SNES Gaming Uniracers

Uniracers hit the scene on the super nintendo and in my opinion was one of the coolest racing games to come out at the time, until of course Mario Kart crashed through the gaming world and brought the gaming world to its knees. 

Though before Mario Kart we had Uniracers, a game about racing unicycles, no people just unicycles. They race through bright colored race tracks to make it to the end and win the medal. I loved the game and spent tons of hours playing trying to beat both my top scores and the top scores put into the game pre-stock.

Uniracers was created DMA Design and is pretty hard to find, since DMA was sued by Pixar the year the game was released for the unicycle design looking close to a concept from their 1987 short film Red’s Dream. DMA lost the law suit and was forced to not produce anymore cartridges after its initial 300,000 production run.

If you have the chance to pick up this game do it now, if you own a SNES it is completely worth it. I know some days when I’m done with the games we have nowadays I pick up this game and rock out to what is still my favorite racing game.

by

Traci Goodwin 

World of Warcraft Things to do While Waiting for Mists

With Mists of Panderia coming soon, the game can sometimes be at a stand still. You can feel lost at times when there’s no more raiding to be had and no more leveling to be achieved. So you have to find something more to do when the air in game is stale. 

Darkmoon Faire is still fairly new, there is still things to get if you are like some a pet collector or item collector.

There are achievements to complete.. lately I’ve been running around completing quests for the Loremaster achievement because I was too lazy to complete it years ago and it’s giving me time to see the old worlds I neglect (and make a nice coin off all the things I find.)

There is pet collecting to get up to the 150 mark if you haven’t reached it yet, or Mount collecting if you are still shy of the 100 mark. 

There is completing things like the Arena Grand Master achievement or the Fishing achievement.. (I’m never online for either derby.. someday, someday). 

I am still working on reputations, only 5 more til 50.. just the old world stuff, just takes forever to get there.. 

There is still so much to do in game if you want to be in game. If you need the break Diablo 3 is coming out in less then a week and has a lot to look forward too, or if you have consoles you can always break them out since there is a lot of great games out there, take a look at our gaming section, we’ll be talking about lots of different games you should be playing. 

So yes the game at the moment is stale but like wow has always been the wait will be over in a while you just have to amuse yourself until the expansion makes its way to the shelves. 

by

Traci Goodwin 

Games you may have Looked Over - Chocobo's Dungeon

I am in love with chocobo’s, have been since the beginning of Final Fantasy. I fell in love with Chocobo Racing, the cute little ones you in the fields, and of course baby chocobo’s. I was overjoyed when I found out that Square Enix was doing a second Chocobo Dungeon game, so many years after the original for the Playstation and bringing it to the wii. Then I was again saddened to see it come and go without so much as a whisper, and now its hard to find but worth the looking.

You play as an adorable baby chocobo who is helping recover memories in the town of LostTime. You run with Cid and he’s on a search to make an Airship. You have to save each person at different times during the game to move along the story line. Each person’s dungeon is different, some may require you to bring nothing into the dungeon, others start you with 1 HP or 0 food. The zero food level is incredibly hard in my opinion because you can’t get hit by monsters and the entire level your health is going down by each step.  I get fustrated sometimes and just want to throw the wii remote at the tv. 

I love the little noises the wii remote makes at different times as you play the baby chocobo.  The games interactions with other characters can at times be long winded and slightly annoying, but if you play the other Final Fantasy you already know how long drawn out the stories can be. That’s really my only complaint with the game, some of the other things like the the random difficulty of the dungeons or the Kupo’s game being based completely on luck. 

The big Boss monsters at the end of each dungeon aren’t too difficult so each level isn’t just about getting to the end, instead you can enjoy each floor and level your different classes as you go. That’s one of my favorite things, you can play different classes : Black Mage, white Mage, Jester, Knight, Thief, and more. Each class has its own abilities and spells and specialities. For example, the white mage is great for healing yourself through dungeons where you don’t need to fight mobs. The Thief is great for getting extra items for coin, for the times when you want to upgrade gear or buy things like gyshal greens (to keep up your hunger level) or make bigger bags.

Square Enix in my opinion made a great game for the female gamers, and for those nostalgic for the original chocobo dungeon.  The game is quite cute so some men might not enjoy the game, but the dungeons are full of mobs to kill and the game at times can be quite challenging. I will call this a great game to help get your non gamer, into the gaming world. 

So check out amazon or the used section of your local game store for a copy of this game and show some chocobo love. 

by

Traci Goodwin 

Movie Moxie presents Lame Gamer -- Prototype 2

Set in an alternate future where the Blacklight virus has devastated mankind, new protag James Heller is on a quest to destroy the virus, and kill it’s apparent progenitor Alex Mercer. Heller’s family was inevitably destroyed in the second outbreak of the Blacklight virus, that’s what the game Gods would have us believe, yet it’s a tried and true storyline that’s worked for other games – dangle Heller’s family as still being alive in front of him throughout the game, to goad him on. At least, one of his daughters.

The husband, the one who actually played the game while I watched, was rather disparaging when it came to describing the game’s RP missions. Apparently there is very little in the way of contiguous roleplay throughout the game missions available, it’s just go pick up all the virus drop box containers or whatever that that enemy helo just dropped. Rather spoonfed and unworthy. From what I observed, and the husband agrees, the actual game play itself, at least the flying through the air parts, were rather like Prince of Persia. And I thought the virus upgrades, where you can form weapons and attacks and such from Heller’s own diseased body in a rather Hellraiser fashion, at least visually was awesome. Can’t say if it was gameplay-wise, but the husband didn’t seem to think so. Heller is apparently a new protagonist for the sequel, and I must say I felt rather bad for him. Mercer’s sister Diana of course turns out to be a Protag ally as far as Heller goes, providing him with information to keep going, and trying to keep Heller focused on his goals rather than going off all Hulk-SMASH style on everything. There is a fair amount of cursing in the cut scenes of the game, and since a lot of it is coming from a huge disease-ridden Cenobite-style really pissed off black guy, I’d run.

I don’t recall watching the husband play the first Prototype game, which should tell you how memorable it was right there. The hubby does say the first one was better, but then he’s a bit biased. The cut scenes were okay, if not fairly interesting, for me to watch. But the actual gameplay didn’t once have me wanting to try it, nor watching all that often. And the plot tie-ins, what little there are frankly (I mean, if you’ve seen Resident Evil, you know how this is going to end) aren’t original enough to keep Lame Gamer going. It’s not terrible, but not great either, and so gets a 6 out of 10 rating.

by

Alicia Glass

Retro Review: Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

Title: Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (The Puppet Princess of Marl Kingdom)

Developer: Nippon Ichi Software

Publisher: ATLUS USA

Consoles: Playstation & Nintendo DS

US Release Dates: December 1998 (PS) - Rereleased July 2000 (PS)

August 2008 (DS)

Genre: Musical RPG - Single Player

One of my favorite games growing up was Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. The perfect cutesy-wootsy girly game I’ve ever come across. You play Coronet, a young puppeteer slash trumpet player, who daydreams about meeting her prince charming. Alongside her adventures is Kururu, a talking puppet who is Coronet’s best friend and comedic relief. At the start of the game, you guide Coronet and Kururu through the forest to collect Inotium, the currency of Marl, for Coronet’s grandfather. They end up getting attacked by a weird looking beastie but get saved by the one and only, Ferdinand, Prince of Marl Kingdom. Coronet gets the stereotypical goo goo eyes for Prince Wishy-Washy, but their romance has yet to blossom when our wonderful Villainess, Marjoly, pops in and decides that she wants the prince all to herself, but is hilariously reminded by her three sisters that she’s WAAAY older than the prince and that she has a snowball’s chance in hell. The rest of the game plays out as you guide our heroine through the world of Marl to help rescue her prince….yada yada yada.

The battle system is pretty simplistic, with most battles lasting under a minute. So this isn’t the game for hardcore gamers. But if you like cute romance and comedy, this is a nice choice of game. Coronet’s abilities range from calling upon her puppet friends to help out or even ridiculous powers such as pancake stacks pummeling her enemies. The game has comedy, romance, pitifully evil villains, and a lot of song and dance numbers. Included in the US Playstation release, you also get the soundtrack which was a nice bonus. I did love this game because it was unique and like nothing else I ever played. Included in the “Extra Features” on the Playstation version are character art, backgrounds, lyrics, and Japanese/English versions of all the songs featured in-game. 

Rhapsody was rereleased in 2008 on the Nintendo DS although all the songs are strictly in Japanese and there are some extra scenarios added from the other sequels of the Puppet Princess series. The battles were also changed to turn-based versus the original strategic tactics set-up. So all in all, if you’re wanting to play Rhapsody and get the full experience, I would highly recommend the Playstation version over the DS version any day. 

See ya guys in the next article. Game on, Players! 

XO

by

Karen Caldwell