Hey look, a quiet week of releases. I guess the gaming Illuminatti saw how hard I worked on last week’s Wii U write up that they decided to give me a break; thank you dark lords! However, it’s not really a bad week in games, both Evil West and Gungrave G.O.R.E. look sufficiently bonkers and I can see myself picking them up…in four months from Target when they drop to $19.99. Folks, this is also our Thanksgiving edition, a time to feast on turkey, ham, and pumpkin pie, while spending time with people you love. I’m grateful for not just my family and close friends, but you too, dear reader. You mean more to me that you probably know; love can last forever, you can make it last forever, and you can make it last.

Top Releases:

Evil West (PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 22^nd

Developed by: Flying Wild Hog
Published by: Focus Entertainment

Developer Flying Wild Hog found their footing by releasing three entries in the rebooted Shadow Warrior franchise, giving players buckets of blood and oodles of fun. Now the team is stepping away from the FPS realm and heading into third person, taking major inspiration from titles like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta with their ultra violent Evil West. Hack and slash your way through a multitude of foul creatures and supernatural beings, keeping the U.S.A. a-ok.

Gungrave G.O.R.E. (PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 22^nd

Developed by: Iggymob
Published by: Prime Matter

Twenty years after it debuted in Japan, and 18 after coming West, the Gungrave series is back with its third installment, Gungrave G.O.R.E. (Gunslinger Of REsurection). Set two years after the events of the the second game, Overdose, players will embark on a new story with all of their, er, favorite characters (come on, name your favorite Gungrave character, I dare you). Hey, honestly, if you showed me clips of this game and Evil West I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference. This series has never really been loved by critics, probably why it has only had three entries in twenty years, so don’t get your hopes up too much for this one.

Just Dance 2023 Edition (PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 22^nd

Developed by: Ubisoft Paris
Published by: Ubisoft

Just in time for your Thanksgiving get together comes Just Dance 2023 Edition, so be sure to throw away all of your older copies of the game, this is the new shit.

Ship of Fools (PC/PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Nov. 22^nd

Developed by: Fika Productions
Published by: Team17

We’re basically in “everything else” territory here, but with so few games coming out I figured I should highlight all of them. Here’s Ship of Fools, it’s a rogue-like.

Dysterra (PC) – Releases Nov. 23^rd

Developed by: Reality MagiQ
Published by: Kakao Games

Fart Poop has died of dysterra.

Aliisha – The Oblivion of Twin Goddesses (Switch) – Releases Nov. 24^th

Developed by: Underscore Games/Joy Brick
Published by: PQube

This puzzle/adventure game had me really intrigued until I read this in the description, “Control Aisha by using the Joy-Con controller on the TV, while the other player commands Lisha’s AI Robot using the Nintendo Switch system in handheld mode“; what? How can someone play on the TV while the Switch is undocked? The official website is not very helpful at all and makes the game sound incredibly confusing, check it out if you want to get a head ache, https://aliishathegame.com/. All in all, great job, PQube, your description of the game is so confusing that I’ll probably skip right over this.

 

Expansions:

Prison Architect – Future Tech Pack (PC/PS4/Xbox One) – Releases Nov. 22^nd

The fact that this exists is so bizarre to me. Like, who is this for?

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight (PC) – Releases Nov. 28^th

WoW heads rejoice, the latest expansion to the long running MMO is finally here! Now you get to ride dragons which is, like, totally sick.

 

Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 (and sometimes 40) years ago:

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale (PS3/PS Vita) – Released Nov. 20^th, 2012: Wiki Link

Crossovers, connected universes, recurring characters, the multiverse, mash-ups, whatever you want to call it, the idea of taking characters, places, events, etc. from one work of fiction and put it together with another work of fiction has been around since, well, probably when humans first started telling stories. The various Greek and Roman gods would appear in each others stories, Shakespeare often used similar character types, so mush so that you could potentially call them the same person, and comic books have been doing it since day one, practically. In video games, you would sometimes get a fun easter egg like Mario as the referee in Punch-Out!! or one off team up’s like the Battletoads and Billy & Jimmy Lee meeting up in Battletoads/Double Dragon, but it wasn’t really something you saw on a large scale; then Super Mario Kart came out. Suddenly you had a game that not only had an established character in a new genre, but it brought an entire cast of characters along. Nintendo would continue this trend in Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and then, of course, they’d release the biggest crossover game of all, Super Smash Bros.

For years, Nintendo was really the company in town making a fighting game that featured famous video game characters. Yeah, SNK had King of Fighters and Capcom’s Street Fighter series would incorporate characters from their various in-universe games, but no one else was taking non-fighting game characters and putting them in a fighting game. That is, until 2012, when Sony decided to throw their hat into the ring and release PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Initially conceived around 2009, this new Sony fighting game was slated to be developed by Naughty Dog, however they were very busy with finishing up The Last of Us and just didn’t have time to devote to this game that was, at the time, codenamed Title Fight. Sony decided to create a new studio to take on the job, calling it SuperBot Entertainment. The company was founded by two former Santa Monica Studios employees, Shannon Studstill and Chan Park, with PlayStation All-Stars being their first major title.

Like Smash Bros., PlayStation All-Stars is a four player, free-for-all battle in which players pummel each other until one person is crowned the winner. While Smash requires players to increase their opponents damage gauge and then knock them off screen, PlayStation All-Stars requires players to increase their own special attack gauge by hitting other players or collecting orbs scattered on the battlefield. Once players fill their gauge they can unleash a devastating special attack that will KO their opponent and give them a point. This special attack gauge has three levels, with the attacks growing stronger and harder to block as you go. However, while you may want to fill up your gauge to level three, you must keep in mind that other players can, and will, KO you as you try to do this. It’s not quite as satisfying as launching someone off the side of the screen in Smash Bros., but there’s a level of strategy to be had here, especially if you can time your attack just right in order to KO multiple opponents.

With Smash Bros., players got a wide range of characters across multiple Nintendo franchises, from Mario to Metroid to Earthboud to Pokémon and so on. It was an eclectic grouping of characters that contained old favorites as well as more niche ones. With PlayStation All-Stars, SuperBot had to work with the very few “mascots” that Sony had in their stable, meaning that there were a lot more “mature” characters than you would find in Smash Bros. You had Nathan Drake from Uncharted, Cole AND Evil Cole from Infamous, Nariko from Heavenly Sword, and Colonel Radec from Killzone (I’ll give you five bucks if you already knew the name of Killzone 2’s primary antagonist). While Smash Bros. did get more “mature” human characters later on like Solid Snake, his inclusion feels more like a funny joke.

It wasn’t all serious characters, Sony does have some more cartoon-y characters to play with, bringing in PaRappa The Rapper from PaRappa The Rapper, Sly Cooper from Sly Cooper, Fat Princess from Fat Princess, Jak & Daxter from Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank from Ratchet & Clank, Sackboy from Sackboy, I mean, Little Big Planet, Toro Inoue the Japanese PlayStation mascot (little white cat) and Spike from Ape Escape. There were two other “mature” characters as well but they actually feel thematically accurate, with Kratos from God of War and Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal.

Still, that line up must have felt a bit lacking to Sony so, like Smash, they went out to third party developers to get them to loan Sony their famous characters. Big Daddy from Bioshock, Dante from DmC, Heihachi from Tekken, Raiden from Metal Gear, and Sir Daniel Fortesque from MediEvil. Later, players would get a four more characters, Isaac from Dead Space, Kat from Gravity Rush, Zeus from God of War, and everyone’s favorite Sony character Emmett from Starhawk. There were also two more characters planned as DLC, Abe from Oddworld and Dart from The Legend of Dragoon but were both cancelled due to poor sales. Oh yeah, this game was a bomb.

Critics weren’t overly impressed with PlayStation All-Stars, giving it mediocre scores and painting it as painfully average with very little to do. Players, particularly Nintendo fans, balked at the game with loyalists saying they’d never play a Smash Bros. rip-off, and normal people potentially seeing it as a crass cash grab. As far as the creators of the characters, the only one to really speak up was Rodney Greenblat who noted that he was happy to see Sony use PaRappa again but was dismayed that it was in such a violent genre, with PaRappa using weapons to kill other people. Despite the only average reviews, PlayStation All-Stars managed to nab the “Best Fighting Game” trophy at the DICE Award, beating Persona 4 Arena, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and SoulCalibur V. My only guess as to how to travesty happened was that perhaps the voters had grown tired of traditional fighting games. Despite this win, PlayStation All-Stars was dead in the water when it came to sales. Though it would achieve nearly 1 million copies sold, this was not the outcome Sony was hoping for, causing them to end the franchise and cancel all future DLC, as well as leaving SuperBot to wither on the vine and die. This game is locked to the PS3 with no way to play it on modern consoles, but who cares, it sucks.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Xbox) – Released Nov. 17^th, 2002: Wiki Link

The stealth genre in video games owes a hefty thanks to Metal Gear Solid. Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece on the PlayStation finally put the genre on the map, spawning imitators left and right. One of the most successful was Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell. Developed under the Tom Clancy brand, Splinter Cell is not based on an existing Clancy novel, instead being thematically consistent with Clancy’s novels (though several Splinter Cell novels have been published since the game’s release). In the game, players take on the role of Sam Fisher, an ex Navy SEAL who has recently joined the NSA. Fisher is called upon to locate and extract two CIA agents who have gone missing in the country of Georgia. Once there, Sam discovers that the newly installed President has begun an ethnic cleansing campaign in the country of Azerbaijan, instigating a NATO response.

While Splinter Cell is grounded in realism, the game first started life as a science fiction game called The Drift. In this game, players would have taken on the role of a James Bond-esque super spy and would have been heavily influenced by System Shock. Ubisoft intended to release the game as a PS2 exclusive and referred to it as their “Metal Gear Solid 2 killer”. However, the game was delayed and re-tooled into Splinter Cell, being a timed exclusive for the Xbox. The PC port would release in February of 2003, keeping close to the Xbox version, while the PS2 and GameCube versions would release in April with several small tweaks to the gameplay, making it much easier on those consoles, while also including new items such as the binoculars. A GBA version would also release in April, turning the game into a side scrolling platformer with minor stealth mechanics.

When it released in November of 2002, Splinter Cell was a massive success with both critics and players, selling over three million copies worldwide on just the Xbox, with another three million sold across PC, PS2, and GameCube. This made Splinter Cell the 6th best selling Xbox game of all time, only losing out to the two Halo titles, the GTA double pack, Fable, and Sneak King (WTF?). According to critics, Splinter Cell was a revelation in the stealth genre and was a serious contender for Metal Gear’s crown. They praised the game’s realism and story, as well as the graphics and lighting, calling it some of the best ever. For the role of Sam Fisher Ubisoft hired Michael Ironside, the prolific character actor who had been in everything from Top Gun to Total Recall to Free Willy. His portrayal of Sam Fisher was highly praised, with critics calling his performance “perfect”. During the awards season, Splinter Cell would win “Best Narrative” at the GDC Awards, and at the DICE Awards it would receive “Outstanding Gameplay Engineering” and “Console Game of the Year”, while being nominated for “Outstanding Visual Engineering”, “Innovation in Console Gaming”, and “Console Action/Adventure GOTY”.

Splinter Cell would go on to spawn a massive franchise, being part of the gaming landscape for over a decade, releasing it’s most recent title, Blacklist, in 2013. Since then, Ubisoft have been quiet in regards to Splinter Cell, only making vague statements about wanting to potentially think about starting to think about making a new game. A film adaptation has been in development hell since 2005, with Tom Hardy currently attached to play Sam Fisher, though there’s word on when/if this will ever come to fruition. Splinter Cell is fairly easy to play today if you own an Xbox console, where the game is available digitally. I really like Splinter Cell, it’s not as good as Metal Gear Solid which is far more up my alley due to how bonkers it is, but Splinter Cell does a really good job of making you feel tense when you’re in a life or death situation and you don’t want to get caught. If you’ve slept on this franchise for one reason or another, do yourself a favor and give it a try.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) – Released Nov. 24^th, 1992: Wiki Link

Following the release of the Super Nintendo, Sega started to see their rivals overtake them in Japan in the 16-bit era of gaming. However, over in North America, the Genesis was still dominating the 16-bit market, all thanks to a little blue hedgehog named Sonic. Despite the popularity of Sonic in the West, where the game had sold nearly 3 million copies, his lower profile in Japan, where the game only sold about 250,000 copies, was giving Sega cold feet on a follow-up title. Begrudgingly, Sega of Japan allowed Mark Cerny’s Sega Technical Institute to begin work on Sonic the Hedgehog 2, giving him one year to get the game onto store shelves.

When Mark Cerny founded Sega Technical Institute, his goal was to marry U.S. and Japanese design philosophies to create an elite game studio. To help with this, Cerny travelled to Japan to meet with Yuji Naka, the lead programmer on Sonic the Hedgehog, to try and convince him to come back to Sega and work on the sequel. You see, after the release of the first Sonic, Naka felt that Sega did not adequately support him and his team, with demanding deadlines and lack of proper compensation. Cerny implored Naka to join him at STI where he would receive a generous salary and far greater creative control on Sonic 2. With Naka on board, several other members of the Sonic team followed suit and came to California to work at STI, including the game’s designer Hirokazu Yasuhara.

With only about nine months to develop the game, the team at STI went full steam ahead on Sonic 2. Yasuhara wrote a massive, novel length document detailing the story and characters for Sonic 2. Initially, the plan was to have Dr. Robotnik take over the world, with Sonic using time travel to go back in time and stop key moments in history where Robotnik gained the upper hand. However, this idea was a bit too ambitious and difficult to implement in such a short time, though this idea can still be seen in the levels with Hill Top Zone looking like a prehistoric version of Green Hill Zone (including having dinosaur robots as enemies), and Chemical Plant and Casino Nights existing in a future where Robotnik had been in power for several years.

While the first Sonic didn’t have a two player mode, Yasuhara really wanted this as a feature in Sonic 2. Like they did for the design of Sonic, Sega ran an internal contest to see who could come up with the best design for this new character. The winning design was submitted by Sonic 2’s chief artist, Yasushi Yamaguchi, a small fox with two tails, based on the Kitsune creatures from Japanese folklore. Yamaguchi named the character “Miles Prower” (or “Miles per hour”, get it?), but Sega really wanted to name the character Tails. In a compromise, Sega acknowledged that Miles Prower was his legal name, but everyone just called him by his nickname, Tails. By adding a second character, the team was able to give Sonic 2 a two player mode, allowing the second player to control Tails, assisting Sonic and helping him to reach high platforms.

STI’s goal with Sonic 2 was to make a sequel that not only lived up to the expectations set by the first game, but to exceed them. To do this, Cerny insisted that Sonic be faster, really pushing the limits of the Genesis’ power. Sonic 2 had far more types of levels than the first game and they had most levels end after only two acts instead of three. This focus on a faster, tighter game was paramount to its success. As for the chaos emerald mini game, the team removed the old spinning stage and put in a faux 3D “endless runner” type of stage. In here, Sonic and Tails would run down a halfpipe that would curve and slope, collecting coins. Along the way there are bombs that can cause Sonic to trip up and drop some of the coins he had collected. Despite the impressive graphics, the mini game was criticized for its extreme difficulty.

Before development began, Cerny had envisioned this kind of work utopia where all of the brightest American and Japanese minds would coexist in harmony and put out the greatest games ever made; that didn’t happen. Instead, Cerny found that it was very difficult for his team to work with their Japanese co-workers due to the language barrier; the US team didn’t know Japanese and the Japanese team didn’t speak English. Not just that, but crunch culture was used in every Japanese game studio, leading to the Japanese team to work long hours and oftentimes sleep in their cubicles in the office. This was a far cry from how Cerny and the other Americans worked, shuttering STI at night and locking the doors in your more traditional 9 to 5 setting. This lead to a lot of tension between Cerny’s team and Naka’s team. The pressure apparently got so bad that Cerny left the studio he had founded. Not only was he feeling time pressure, but Naka was slowly gaining more power within the company, bringing over more and more Japanese team members and showing the Sega brass that, due to his crunch culture mentality, their team care more about Sonic 2 than Cerny’s team.

Despite the crunch, several levels in the game were cut and, surprise, surprise, most of them were the ones created by the American team. Most of these team members didn’t learn about the cuts until just before or just after the release of the game, infuriating them. When all was said and done, it is likely only one person from Cerny’s team even got any of their art/work into the game, Craig Stitt, who often worked alongside chief artist Yasaushi Yamaguchi. Despite perception, designer Hirokazu Yasuhara said in later interviews that the only reason for cutting the levels was because they were just not in a good, playable state. He claimed that each cut hurt him deeply and he wished that they could have used all of them and would have, if Sega had given them more time. He has since expressed a desire to remake Sonic 2 with these cut levels.

Development of the game came down to the wire, with the game only being fully playable less than 48 hours before it was given to testers in mid September. Around 50 people play tested Sonic 2, looking for bugs, and their gameplay was video recorded to help the programmers more easily identify where potential problems would arise. Testing took roughly three weeks, all done in the U.S., impressing Sega of Japan with how quickly and efficiently the process went (because in America we only treat low level employees like shit. High level employees get to go home at 5 pm). With the game finished, the code was shipped to Japan where the cartridges would be produced. Two copies of the source code were created and were flown on two different airplanes, just in case one crashed.

Sega of America had a lot riding on Sonic the Hedgehog 2. They were in a commanding lead over Nintendo of America and they needed Sonic 2 to really rock the holiday season of 1992. The company spent nearly $10 million on advertising, starting with print ads in all sorts of different magazines, a television commercial promoting a deal to receive the game for free with purchase of a Genesis, sending tons of promotional items and pre-order bonuses to retail stores, and even giving an early build to the game show Nick Arcade where it was one of the games made available to play during competition. When the game arrived on U.S. shores, Sega sent costumed characters to meet the plan at Heathrow airport. The initial idea was that Sega would tour the game across the country, rolling it out East to West, stopping at popular shopping malls along the way. However, this idea was scrapped as it wouldn’t give Sega enough time to get the game into stores for Christmas. Instead, Sega of America took a bold approach to the game’s release, making it available everywhere ON THE SAME DAY.

This type of release was unheard of in the video game industry, with even consoles releasing in a staggered schedule, hitting major markets and regions first before arriving in smaller regions. This also helped drive the marketing as well, as Sega of America branded the November 24th release as “Sonic 2sday”. This was also one of the rare instances where a game released in Japan, North America, and Europe on (roughly) the same day. The marketing blitz worked with U.S. retailers preordering roughly 2 million copies for the holiday season. One day one, 1 millions copies were sold, including more than 400,000 customer preorders. By the end of 1992, Sonic 2 had grossed $450 million (about $870 million today), beating out every film released that year. Over in Japan though, well, things weren’t so great for sonic. The game sold 160,000 copies, which was even lower than the first Sonic.

Critics in the U.S. were over the moon for Sonic 2, calling it one of, if not THE best game of 1992. It earned scores well of 90% in most publications, and was given a perfect score by GamePro magazine. Critics loved the graphics, the speed, and the level design. Despite the drop from three acts to two, the levels were far larger and full of secrets, making them highly replayable. This high level of replayability was the saving grace from the game’s one major point of criticism, it was way too short (and a buggy mess. I guess those overworked American testers weren’t so hot after all). At the end of the year, Sonic 2 was named “Best Genesis Game” by EGM, was nominated for GOTY by Electronic Games magazine (totally different publication), losing to Street Fighter II (SNES) but winning “Best Graphics”. Over at the Chicago Tribune it came in third behind Street Fighter II (SNES) and A Link to the Past.

Today, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is widely available to play on any modern console and on PC, with Sega fully supporting their vast back catalog (take note, Nintendo). It is absolutely one of the greatest video games ever made, a true masterpiece, even if its development was troubled and steeped in animosity. Naka would continue to live in America and work at STI, developing Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, with zero involvement from American developers. He had a long, but troubled career afterwards, and was recently arrested in Japan for insider trading (womp, womp). Mark Cerny joined Crystal Dynamics after leaving STI and became one of the first third party studios to receive a development kit for an upcoming console that Sony was working on called PlayStation. Cerny would go on to bring both Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon to that machine, leading to a long and fruitful relationship with Sony, one that still continues to this day.

Pole Position – Released Nov. 30^th, 1982: Wiki Link

The arcade title Pole Position was not the first faux 3D racing game on the market, but it was the best. Created by Shinichiro Okamoto and Kazunori Sawano, Pole Position elevated the faux 3D racing genre by incorporating real world race tracks, requiring players to qualify for the race before actually racing, and granting points for overtaking drivers. The idea for Pole Position came from an earlier Namco arcade game called F-1, a crude yet highly sophisticated game that used real, physical items to give the illusion of driving along an oval track (it’s a brilliant design). It would take Namco nearly three years to develop the game, wanting to get the driving just right. The goal of the development team was to make this as close to a real driving simulator as possible, giving skilled drivers a chance to use techniques they would use on an actual race track.

Upon its release, Pole Position was one of the most technologically advanced arcade cabinets on the market. It contained two16-bit processors and a state of the art Z8000 CPU in order to make the 3D effects look convincing; this amount of processing power in an arcade machine was unheard of and highly unusual. The name of the game was suggested by Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani, stating that he thought the name sounded cool. Namco made two versions of the game, one was a standup machine that had a steering wheel, gear shifter, and gas pedal, while the other was a sit down cabinet that enveloped the player. It too had a steering wheel, gear shifter, and gas pedal, but also gave players a brake pedal to use as well.

Game play in Pole Position is fairly simple by today’s standards, with players first having to complete a time trial race in order to qualify for the grand prix. Played in a third person view behind the car, players must stay on the track, passing rival racers and avoiding billboards on the side of the road. If you happen to crash into either of these you are treated to a spectacular explosion animation that still looks amazing today. Namco would reach out to Atari to distribute the game in North America where it became a smash hit with both critics and players.

At the Arkies, Pole Position would be named “Coin-Op Game of the Year”, and in subsequent years it would gain a reputation as being one of the most highly influential video games of all time. The concept of actually winning your race was, surprisingly, unheard of in arcade racing games. Previous titles just gave payers for staying on the road and not hitting other drivers. In Pole Position, not only did you have to avoid hazards, you had to beat your opponents, allowing players to actually practice the “art of driving”, so to speak. Without Pole Position we wouldn’t have games like Outrun, Rad Racer, all the way up to Gran Turismo. For further proof of its impact, Pole Position was one of the few arcade games in the 1980’s to have its own Saturday morning cartoon. Today, Pole Position is a bit difficult to find, as it hasn’t been on any Namco arcade collections since the PS3/360 era. If you still have a PS3 you can buy the PSX classic Namco Museum Vol. 1 digitally, which is how I recently played it. Pole Position is a fantastic game and was well beyond its years. The sheer horsepower driving the game was so advanced that it kept the game looking and playing great for several years. If you ever happen to come across a cabinet in the wild I would highly recommend you give it a try.

 

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