I completed Destruction Derby on the Sony Playstation 1 this evening!

Destruction Derby is one of the few Playstation games that I play with a friend of mine. He is not a big fan of either PS1 or PS2, but I remember playing a few games with him. Destruction Derby is a game that we both enjoy because of our love for destructive racing games and I remember Destruction Derby being one of the first games of that genre. It's an early PS1 game, so he has the long box edition. So, while shopping around after I beat my Backlog, I found one in the jewel case. I could never find that version and since it was only a few bucks, I decided to give it a try for the Single Player Mode.

Destruction Derby is a very simple game. There is your Championship mode, your single race mode and then your Destruction Derby mode. Despite all of that, the game is very fun to play. Each of the tracks and the large Destruction Derby bowl offer opportunities to hit your opponents with simple races or crossing intersections. With twenty different racers, it is very easy to bump into your opponents. And when you do hit your opponent for that nice 360, it feels fantastic. Along with damaging your opponents, you also take damage yourself and it affects the way your car handles. You bust up your left side and then your car leans to one side and makes it incredibly hard to turn.

Granted, turning in the game is a bit difficult to do in the first place. There is this weird floaty controls to your car that makes it feel like you are not in control at all times. You kind of have to go with the car instead of steering it. Also, there are only about 6 tracks and they begin to repeat themselves rather quickly, so the game can feel very repetitive in a short amount of time. For you to win races, you need to place high, but you also get points for wrecking other cars. Those points never made any sense to me as I will ram a car to get no points, but then I barely touch one and I get a bunch of points.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Destruction even though it has its issues. I would say the game is best in short spurts. If you play the game longer than an hour, then you begin to see its flaws and it begins to drag down the experience. But, if you play it at quick bursts, then you will get all the enjoyment out of it. If you like destructive racers, this is a good one to check out, but there are much better ones out there for you to play instead!

I beat Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii this evening!

During college and afterwards for a few years, I would constantly play the original Smash Bros. The amount of hours and kills that I had in that game was utterly insane. It took me quite a while for me to get a GameCube, but I did the same thing with Melee once I had gotten it. I had also played Melee a ton with my friends, so I was quite familiar with it. Obviously, I didn't play it as much as the original, but there was a short time where I loved play Melee. Unfortunately, Brawl was kind of forgotten rather quickly. Neither my friends and I played it all that much compared to the previous two entries. So, when I finally picked up a Wii, I was excited to play through the hidden Smash Bros. game in my mind.

A little precursor, I only got a little taste of Brawl. There was no way for me to experience everything and I didn't want to do matches over and over again. So, most of my time in Brawl was spent playing the Subspace Emissary Mode. I played a few multi man matches and I did go through Classic mode and Home Run Contest once, but I will admit that I only scratched the surface. And I have to say, Subspace Emissary was really pretty fun. One of my favorite aspects about Smash Bros. are the little videos that they release, especially when new characters are announced. The humor is fantastic and they always get me excited. The cutscenes in Subspace are very much of the same vein. In fact, a couple of them made me chuckle. The platforming is mostly passable, though once you realize you can just run past everything, the game loses a bit of challenge. But, the boss fights are really fun and it is great way to unlock all of the characters. The final boss can be very cheap, but you get many characters, so it is a bit fair. You know, for a tact on mode that nobody seemed to like when it came out, I rather enjoyed playing through it. It isn't the main reason to own Brawl, but it was fun.

Overall, I enjoyed Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Once again, I barely scratched the surface of the game as there is just so much to do. One day, I would love to dive deeper into the game and have fun with all of the modes. But, for a quick romp through a single player Adventure Mode, I thought it was enjoyable and well done. If you own Brawl and have never gone through it, I would suggest giving it a shot as it might surprise you. It's an extra ingredient on a wonderful cake!

I completed Bangai-O on the Sega DreamCast this evening!

I am beginning to run a little low on my DreamCast Wishlist. I only have 13 left, so unless I find more games I am interested in when I do a second run of the its History, I am beginning to reach the last few. Like most consoles today, unfortunately, I have a few rather expensive games left. There are two above my price range, but one that was not was Bangai-O. The game was made by Treasure which sparked my initial interest and after watching a review, I was interested in the game. So, in August, while walking around my Local Retro Game Convention, a guy was selling his copy that was near mint. After a little bit of haggling, I was able to grab it from him for a reasonable price. It was the DreamCast game I was most excited to play, so I decided to pop it in and give it a shot.

Bangai-O is a dual stick shooter in the vein of Robotron or Super Smash TV. You control two characters with two different shooting styles and you go through maze like levels until you find the boss to kill and finish the level. Repeat about 44 times and that is the entire game as it is very simple. The interesting part is in the game play as you use the control pad to move your character and the face buttons to shoot in that direction. It doesn't work perfectly as I would love to shoot in a diagonal, but it does its job. Also, you have a counter bomb that shoots missiles at every bullet and enemy on the screen which can reach upwards of a 1,000. When the game works, it is exciting, jaw dropping and amazing having that many bullets and killing that many enemies.

When it doesn't, the game is annoying, frustrating and just plain mean. The levels are incredibly long and the health pickups aren't great while you have little invincibly frames, so it is easy to just get pinged off many bullets. About the halfway point, the level design turns incredibly mean and the game just gets rather repetitive. The hard levels turn into hard bosses that the only way to progress is just spam your bomb over and over again.

Overall, I did like Bangai-O, but boy was it difficult. I do love Shoot'Em Ups, but I am not the greatest at them. This felt like I was in way over my head to enjoy it. Seeing so many bullets on screen and the game slowing down because of it was really cool, but the constant death and the slow nature of progress kind of hurt the experience. Only recommended to veteran Shooters.

I beat Dragon's Crown on the Sony Playstation 3 this evening!

In my eyes, Vanillaware makes the most beautiful games in the entire world. When I first played Odin Sphere on the PS2, it absolutely blew me away in its artistic ability. I then played GrimGrimoire a few years later and I was blown away again. The hand painted and 2D aesthetic is so jaw dropping and stunning to me. One of the main reasons I wanted a PS3 was to play Dragon's Crown, so I was disappointed I couldn't find it in my initial haul. However, while walking around a local Retro Gaming Convention, I found a pristine copy that I had to have. Looking for a PS3 game to play this year, it jumped out at me immediately and I became incredibly impatient to finally play it.

Dragon's Crown keeps the Vanillaware title and is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen. The settings, background, art style and detail in every single little scene is unbelievable. You really feel like you are playing a painting. And I for one love the character art style as well. Everything is over-exaggerated, so of course the characters are as well. Also, for once, we have a Vanillaware game that is not stuck with slow down. The game runs smoothly and is crazy with the amount of characters and stuff on the screen. The game has a wonderful feel of you going on a classic D&D Adventure with your party. And with gameplay that feels like a mixture of Golden Axe and the Capcom D&D Arcade games, it also plays great as well. With stunning music and addictive gameplay, the game is a blast to play.

I just wish it was a little bit better. There are many scenes and moments of the game showing off how much can be on screen at one time. The problem is, you lose yourself rather quickly and just begin mashing away. It's particularly annoying on boss fights, which is the heart of the game. Also, the game's first half is much better than the second half. There are some annoying choices and the boss battles become more than just kill a giant monster, so they become a bit annoying too. Also, there is some weird Vita pointing stuff that just doesn't work at all.

Overall, I still really enjoyed Dragon's Crown. The visuals alone make it a blast and just a fantastic game. Seriously, I could play the game for 100 hours and still be blown away by the graphics. However, the game play has some shortcomings, but if you can look past those, then there is a great looking and playing game!

Thanks You,yeah i got it for christmas but waiting till i can get my old gaming crew together to beat it all co op first time through but it's taking forever.Luckily Cowabunga collection has been filling in the gap with the original nes game and slowly wittingly it down.it was way easier when i was like 3 to 5