twentiethcenturygamer    Happy birthday to me Today marks nine of years of chronicling my playthroughs of 8 and 16-bit video games. On these special occasions, I’ve traditionally made it a point to check out a game that’s widely held to be of high import. Whether it’s a considered a landmark for the medium as a whole or &...

twentiethcenturygamer    What better way to kick off a new year around here than with another console adaptation of my favorite tabletop game, the medium-defining granddaddy of them all, Dungeons & Dragons? This time, it’s the quite obscure Order of the Griffon for the TurboGrafx-16. Debuting in 1992, relatively late into...

twentiethcenturygamer    Back to the Robo- well I go, with 1992’s Robo Aleste It may seem like I’m tempting fate by doing this right after being so thoroughly disappointed by the lackluster SNES RPG Robotrek last week, but there’s no need to fear. Why? Because it’s Compilemas, baby That magical day of the year when I pay &...

twentiethcenturygamer    The small selection of titles developed by Quintet looms comparatively large in the hearts and minds of many Super Nintendo enthusiasts, myself included. Their loose trilogy of fantasy action-RPGs (Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma) is revered for its bold willingness to contrast the usual...

twentiethcenturygamer    Thanksgiving Day is here again, a humble, cozy celebration I’ve always been fond of. There are no gifts to shop for, no decorations to hang, and no elaborate costumes to don. Rather, it’s all about simple gratitude, sharing good food with good people, and upholding the honor of the ninja through...

twentiethcenturygamer    A new Sega Genesis shooter in 2025? And it’s from Ancient, the studio behind such classics as Streets of Rage 2 and Beyond Oasis? Talk about what the world needs now Yes, Earthion here is a true Ancient production through-and-through, right down to a pulse-pounding soundtrack by the premier FM...

twentiethcenturygamer    Happy Halloween, ye dwellers in digital darkness. Rejoice, for the time has come at last for me to delve the devilish depths of the accursed Atari 7800 ProSystem This misbegotten machine famously suffered the misfortune of having its planned 1984 launch delayed until 1986, by which time the...

twentiethcenturygamer    In 1985, ICOM Simulations began rolling out their highly successful MacVenture point-and-click adventure titles. As their collective name implies, the four entries in the series were designed to showcase the intuitive drag-and-drop operation of the graphical user interface that defined mid-’80s...

twentiethcenturygamer    I’m constantly on the lookout for quality action-adventure games. I have been ever since I first discovered the genre’s two most famous trailblazers, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, on my childhood NES. In more recent years, I’ve covered dozens of examples of similar works for a variety of...

twentiethcenturygamer    Time for some of that good old Data East jank For as prolific and successful as the now sadly defunct studio was throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the NES ports of their arcade hits from this period always felt unpolished to me. Crude graphics, jerky animations, and odd performance hiccups are as much...