With Girl Power in Gaming, we’re exploring the role of females in our favorite hobby for the month of September. The series will attempt to explore gender dynamics, pre-assigned roles and both positive and negative examples of female characterization in the digital world.
On June 16, 2015, Nintendo made a long awaited announcement regarding a franchise that had been seemingly forgotten after a less than well received entry. It had been five years since this game was released and fans were eagerly awaiting the next chapter in the story, hopefully to wash the bad taste of the last …
During its Digital Event yesterday Nintendo announced Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a 3DS online multiplayer shooter set in the Metroid universe. Players control someone not named Samus in a mech suit, and head out on co-op missions to clear up the universe’s alien monstrosities. Afterwards, these hardened Galactic Federation troops can unwind with a game …
During the Nintendo Digital Event video on the opening day of E3 2015 in Los Angeles, Nintendo announced games launching in the near future, with a focus on what fans can enjoy in the second half of 2015 and early 2016. This year Mario reaches an impressive milestone in video gaming: 30 years as a …
There’s a moment in the Super Metroid finale, somewhere in between being brain-blasted by a creature that looks like it escaped from Attack on Titan and being saved by a flying alien parasite, that the whole nature of the battle is suddenly revealed to be entirely scripted. The idea of scripted battles, an idea that was still incredibly new back in the 16-bit era of the SNES, made for something of a rarity in the mid-90’s.
There are few titles in established series’ that evoke so much ire as Metroid: Other M. As a member of Nintendo’s Big 3, along with Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, Metroid had a long and treasured history behind it long before Other M came around and mucked with its legacy, taking the series to a full stop in the process.
In his not-quite seminal but still very good 1998 essay “F/X Porn,” David Foster Wallace dissects the lasting legacy of James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day. (Well, more accurately, he examines the enduring stain left by Cameron’s film on the modern action movie, but whatever.) The essay doesn’t offer much in the way of …
Here we are, halfway through our list, and so many more amazing games to mention. Remember folks, we are dedicating the entire month to Nintendo, and will be publishing fresh, original content each and every day. **** 60. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Developer(s) Nintendo EAD Group No. 3 Publisher(s) Nintendo Platform(s) …
It’s been a bit of a strange experience dealing with the virtual console on the Wii U. From the dual menus, one that offers games currently available on the Wii U virtual console, and the other only showing games that the player has previously downloaded for their Wii, the system comes across like a bit …
As a teenager, I felt I would never age. Yet I also knew I would, and more than that, I could anticipate that when I did, everything would change. So I stood then, with confused ideas about time. The future would never arrive, yet it was also imminent. Now, my teenage years were horribly boring and sexless, so I was certainly looking forward to some sort of revolution. It was only a matter of emerging out the far side of high school, into the end of the world as I knew it. Life is a succession of points of no return, and if we find apocalyptic stories about crashing asteroids and alien invasions so absorbing, it might be because they exaggerate this fact. Popular fiction brims with characters who undergo processes of self-discovery while everything around them burns, from The Lord of the Rings to Akira. Watershed moments can be as monumental as they can be personal and private, and though graduating high school or parting with your family are not exactly comparable to a tidal wave, such commonplace events can inspire fear and trembling regardless.
It is something of a crime that the Metroid series has long been akin to the forgotten middle child of Nintendo’s family, the one that is oft ignored in favor of its too more prolific and popular siblings: Mario and Zelda. With several top tier games under its belt, and the many iconic moments it’s contributed to the gaming world, the Metroid series is more than deserving of its due among the Nintendo Big 3.