10 Years Ago This Week: Superman 64
Frequently cited as one of the worst games ever made, Superman 64 (released May 29th, 1999) is a game with no defenders or apologists. Considered to be hot garbage by anyone who’s ever played it, it represents perhaps the best example of a publisher exploiting a license without a care for the consumer, the product, or even the future of the license itself. This made it a failure on every possible level.
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Tags: 10 years ago this week, dc comics, joe keiser, nintendo 64, superman, superman 64, titus, worst game ever
Games to Have a Recession to: Apex
In 2003, Atari released a curious little racing/car company simulation game exclusively onto the Xbox. At the time, most people couldn’t have cared less about it—the concept simply wasn’t very interesting during those days.
But 2009 is a different era, with car companies across the world imploding and classic American brands like Pontiac disappearing into the ether. Suddenly, Apex is a lot more interesting.
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Tags: apex, burnout, gran turismo, joe keiser, need for speed, racing, recession, xbox
10 Years Ago This Weeks: Aliens Vs. Predator
Aliens Vs. Predator (released May 25th, 2009) represented a notable attempt by development studio Rebellion to increase the variety of play in first-person shooters through the use of widely different player characters. Although it was successful in this regard, it became an inexplicable dead-end in FPS design—save for its vastly superior sequel.
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Tags: 10 years ago this week, aliens, aliens vs predator, facehugging as recreational activity, first-person shooters, joe keiser, pc games, predator
Where are my M-Rated Handheld Games?
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is among the best handheld games ever made. For one thing, it’s a delight to play, with its incredible driving mechanics and perfectly chosen touch-based minigames. It also doesn’t pull any punches. It’s gory, and it’s loaded with proscribed drugs and dildos.
In other words it’s a GTA, but something about this one feels…naughtier. Playing it on the train I’m always wondering if the person next to me is sitting aghast as I take “that thing that girl from Friends learns with on the TV” and pervert it with gang wars and heroin empires.
I think that’s great, and I want more of it. So I crunched some numbers to see if things were looking good for me. And guess what? They’re not.
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Tags: chinatown wars, esrb, grand theft auto, joe keiser, m-rated, manhunt 2, nintendo ds, psp, rated m for mature
10 Years Ago This Week: Star Wars Episode I: Racer
One could make a compelling argument that Star Wars Episode I: Racer (released May 19, 1999) was the single best piece of media to come out of the Star Wars Episode I blitzkrieg of pain. Obviously this is a dubious title, but Episode I: Racer still manages to be a consistently competent and occasionally thrilling experience.
That’s probably a not entirely unbiased opinion, though: Fate has conspired to provide me a relationship with Star Wars Episode I: Racer that is not unlike Stockholm syndrome. For years, the game kept falling into my life. It was one of my first Dreamcast games. I received the PC version as a gift when I was actually fishing for X-Wing: Alliance. My brother bought the N64 version, which became my N64 version when ownership of the family N64 reverted to me. And finally, I received its PS2 sequel in a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale at a store that only had three games total (the other two were Maximo and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, so it wasn’t like I could just get nothing).
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Tags: 10 years ago this week, dreamcast, episode i, joe keiser, nintendo 64, pc, star wars, star wars episode i racer, star wars racer revenge, wipeout
Indie Dev Moment: Today I Die
Today I Die is like a good children’s book: it’s dark, has a happy ending (or two), acknowledges the power of simple language, and can be completed in five minutes. It’s by Daniel Benmurgui, the same guy who gave us the endearingly strange .
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Tags: experimental games, i wish i were the moon, indie dev moment, joe keiser, today i die
If 3D Realms is Gone, Let Us Remember the Good Times
It’s currently being reported as rumor, but things are looking bad for 3D Realms. Three separate news sources have independently received reports that the studio is kaput, which…well, it sounds pretty bad. The official 3D Realms forums have collapsed under the weight of the news, but if you can get in you will see people talking about nothing good—that this is 100% true, that the employees’ most recent Facebook updates are all sadness, etcetera.
You have probably already noted that this event, if true, would leave the great running gag that is Duke Nukem Forever without a punchline. While that joke is apparently still hilarious, let’s not talk about that right now. Let’s talk about the best days of 3D Realms (and Apogee, because they’re one in the same), and maybe get our Triad on.
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Tags: 3d realms, apogee, duke nukem, duke nukem 3d, first-person shooters, good old games, i'm all out of gum, joe keiser, rise of the triad
Up All Night: Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
The strangest thing about Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is that it was allowed to live, that after being cut free in the Activision/Vivendi merger somebody at Codemasters looked at a nearly finished version of the game and somehow decided it was worth publishing. As executive decisions go, that one is so utterly baffling that contemplating it is a Zen experience.
So that’s the strangest thing about Box Office Bust. It’s not the worst thing about Box Office Bust, because there is no worst thing; it’s all so uniformly bad that it’s impossible to decide what to hate most.
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Tags: box office bust, joe keiser, leisure suit larry, there is actually a love interest named Ginger Vitus, up all night
Marvel Vs Capcom 2, I’ve Missed You
Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and me, we go way back. The Dreamcast was the first console I ever bought with my own real money, the player two controller the first thing I ever owned on store credit (and I swear, I will pay that back some day). The two-player game that necessitated such bad judgment was, naturally, Marvel Vs Capcom 2. And the Japanese version, too, even though that version had that idiotic arcade-only character unlocking system and there wasn’t an arcade cabinet within 1,000 miles able to accept my sweaty little VMU. The alternative was to wait for the US version. It wasn’t an alternative at all.
I am being 100% honest when I say I spent my prom night with that exotic jewel. When I got to college, the American version—hey, I had to unlock B.B. Hood somehow—became my most consistent and reliable lover. I’ve invented tournaments and drinking games based on its button-mashing bounty. It is my fighter. It is mine.
You probably know that Capcom is making it a downloadable game, that they gave it to Backbone to do something Backbone is notoriously uneven at—tarting up a classic game in high def. A demo came out today, so I did what I had to do: make sure they did right by my baby.
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Tags: backbone entertainment, capcom, dreamcast, joe keiser, lots of p, marvel vs capcom 2, psn, XBLA
10 Years Ago This Week: GTA: London 1969
Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 (released April 29th, 1999) has always been a bit of an oddity in the GTA canon. It was the first and, until this year’s The Lost and Damned, only retail expansion pack for a Grand Theft Auto game. It’s also the only Grand Theft Auto that takes place in a (more or less) real city. Although it’s the least influential and important of the core GTA series, it remains a somewhat interesting look at an industry-leading franchise trying to find itself.
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Tags: 10 years ago, grand theft auto, grand theft auto iii, grand theft auto: london 1969, joe keiser, rockstar, rockstar north, sandbox games
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
