A Nice Hard Slap – Don’t Be Koei With Me.
The Dynasty Warriors
series of video games is the most creatively bankrupt and inexplicably
supported one in the history of consoles yet it is the flagship
franchise for KOEI, one of the greatest video game companies ever to
write software for the planet.
Who
the hell buys this shit? How many times do we need to have brainless
button-mashing antics featuring Japanese warriors in battlefields of
thousands doing combos until the cows not only have come home, but have
built an executive wing to the home for their crazy, bloated and
bleating relatives?
KOEI
made some of the greatest games of my youth for the Sega Genesis, Super
Nintendo, and first few waves of CD and DVD-based consoles. Games that
taught history, strategy, and ones which were geared towards the
intellectual folks who really put video games on the map. Games that
bridged the gap between the PC and the video game world with such
attention to detail that folks like myself still keep a lot of them in
their collection.
Uncharted Waters – My favorite, a must for fans of Sid Meier’s Pirates! and really inventive twists on traditional role-playing and turn-based strategy themes.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
– Terrific strategy stuff, loaded with replayability and one of the
games that firmed up my belief that you don’t need a PC to play good,
intelligent games.
Aerobiz – Run an airline! On the SNES! Are you kidding, how great was this?
P.T.O. –
An amazing series. I got my ass handed to me a lot, but realizing that
I missed the last American release for this series (PS2’s P.T.O. IV) gives me a reason to hit Ebay.
Nobunaga’s Ambition – See Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Winning Post – Horse racing. And it’s GOOD.
Though these cats are still active overseas (they made Uncharted Waters an MMORPG!), the bulk of what we get here is the horseshit Dynasty Warriors games and since I don’t speak Japanese and don’t bootleg I’m shit outta luck.
KOEI used to be great. Now they’re just plain sad.
–
Nick Nunziata misses Uncharted Waters so much.
Before
I go, here’s the latest thing I’m adding to the blog. Each day I blog I’ll
have a song, a piece of artwork, a photo, a Mary Worth, or something to
further justify your click and to give the trolls a little more ammo. Today, the latest out of our SuperHero and SuperVillain Notebook, Nigel the Naval Navigator:
