When you unlock it, the background changes to an NES controller.
Have you ever played a game and thought to yourself, "I'm really digging this game, but I have no idea why." As someone who pretends to be a critic sometimes, it's a very frustrating feeling.
Twisted Metal was an institution on the PlayStation. Much like the landmark titles Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Resident Evil, it exploded its genre, resulting in a bevy of pretenders. For Twisted Metal, it was vehicular comba...
Part of what draws me to Famicom games is the fact that I missed out entirely on the culture around it. Not only am I of an age that would have given the Super Famicom more significance, but -- and this may shock you -- I’m not Japane...
Life is stressful, which is a phrase I hate saying because it reminds me of all the stressful things in my life. We’re living in crappy times, and many of us are in crappy situations. Thankfully, things are starting to improve for me,...
There’s a method to my madness when picking kusoge. A lot of the time, I go by reputation. I may not have played Carmageddon 64 or BMX XXX until I chose them as subjects for articles, but they’re generally understood to be crap ...
Spacebase Startopia is a bit of a weird thing. On the surface, it is definitely some sort of remake/reimagining/remaster of 2001's Startopia. It's even right there in the name. Looking over the marketing however, you'll find a suspicious la...
I can’t claim to be intimately familiar with Record of Lodoss War, but then, it’s a little scarce in the West. It started out as a “replay” of a group’s Dungeons and Dragons campaign, then spun out in about a m...
BMX XXX sounds like a terrible idea on paper. It’s technically a perversion of the Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX series, which itself is a perversion of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Acclaim decided that they weren’t making enough mo...
I love Moai. It’s an interesting aesthetic; huge, monolithic humans with warped proportions. But do you know who loves Moai more? Japanese video game developers. They show up as bosses and in the background all the time in a wide vari...
The evil genius archetype is one that fascinates me. It’s not that outlandish that an eccentric megalomaniac could gather a group of underlings and launch a campaign against the world, but I can’t convince a courier to leave a p...
It’s impossible to understate the impact Ghostbusters has had on my life. I was fanatical about it when I was a child, and then I rediscovered it in my adolescent years and became fanatical all over again. I still carry a massive torc...
Spent most of my night becoming yokozuna.
Nineteen eighty-six was a transformative year for Nintendo. Super Mario Bros. had released at the end of the previous year and ushered in a slew of influential games. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus (I guess), many of which were ri...
I’m not sure if this is unusual since I don’t typically discuss “emotions” with other “humans,” but I generally play psychological horror games to feel sad rather than scared. Video games lost their abili...
The Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation basically lived their lives during the “Attitude” or “Monday Night Wars” era of wrestling. If you’re unfamiliar, it was this incredibly tacky time where cartoonish machi...
River City Ransom was an important game in the development of my retro appreciation. My early attempts at familiarizing myself with the NES included such titles as Kid Icarus, Friday the 13th, and -- I swear this is true -- Total Recall. It...
What’s in this polite package from Japan? I hope it’s ramen!
Listen, Uncle Destructoid: Buy me this and I will write it up so hard...
If you’re familiar with my Famicom Friday articles, you’ll know I’ve already bemoaned the lost soul of Konami, and I don’t plan to stop sulking anytime soon. What you might not know are the depths of my despair. They...
I’m going to be honest with you, the advice I usually give people who are looking to give Chulip a try is to make sure you have something nearby to read. Chulip is an unfriendly game, and among its unfriendly features is a nasty littl...
It's entirely my intention to keep updating the Game Complaint Department even though Destructoid is now my primary home. Anyway, here's a review for La-Mulana, a game that likes to hurt me.
This time of year always gets me feeling nostalgic about my trip to Japan. Hard to believe it was 7 years ago. It's also hard to believe I once had enough money to travel.
I’m the world’s foremost expert on the Army Men series of games, and while I can see you raising a skeptical eyebrow, I have to ask: do you really want to challenge that claim? The series is something of a guilty pleasure of min...
