Happy New Year everyone! We’ve said goodbye to 2023 and now we’re here to begin the celebration of the brand new crop of video games for 2024, hooray! Well, as you can imagine, this first week isn’t all that exciting, with only a handful of small titles to check out.

Our top game of the week is Tools Up! Ultimate Edition, which is a re-release of the 2019 title Tools Up!. With shades of Overcooked, Tools Up! tasks players with renovating homes, having to complete multiple tasks that are all layered on top of each other. You’ll need to cope with chaos in order to advance to the next stage; good luck.

Aside from that, we have a new Micro Machines game, Mini Challenge Mayhem, for everyone that got a VR headset over the holidays, and there’s a new sliding tile puzzle game called Shivering Stone that looks boring AF. 2024, baby!

You know what’s not boring? This video I made, check it out!

Top Releases:

Tools Up! Ultimate Edition (PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One) – Releases Jan. 5^th

Developed by: Knight of Unity
Published by: Untold Tales

Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem (PC (VR requires)/Meta Quest 3) – Releases Jan. 4^th

Developed by: WIMO Games
Published by: WIMO Games

Shivering Stone (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Jan. 5^th

Developed by: doublemizzlee, Eastasiasoft Ltd.
Published by: Eastasiasoft Ltd.

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

Out of this week’s notable titles, only one really did anything for me, 2014’s The Banner Saga. This tactical strategy/RPG has gorgeous, hand drawn graphics and tells a sweeping, epic saga about a great war between humans, giants, and monsters. The game was initially conceived by two former Bioware Austin employees, Alex Thomas & John Watson, who left the company after working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Their goal was to create a strategy game to cater to a mature, adult audience that were interested in fantasy stories akin to Game of Thrones.

Thomas & Watson had originally planned to develop and publish The Banner Saga using their own savings but quickly realized that this would not be feasible. Seeing the success that Double Fine had with their Broken Age campaign on Kickstarter, the two decided to crowdfund their new game. They had wanted to ask people for $10,000, subsequent Kickstarter successes, like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity had them thinking they could go higher, settling on an initial goal of $100,000; The Banner Saga would go on to generate a little over $700,000 by the end of its campaign.

With the extra money, Thomas & Watson were able to hire a few more developers to their new studio, Stoic, as well as increase the scope of the game, and add in features they cut early in development. This extra money also allowed the team more time to polish the game, leading to a delay in release, from mid 2013 to the beginning of 2014. Critics gave glowing reviews to The Banner Saga, however there were some that noted the “low budget” quality of the gam, and felt the combat would eventually become tedious. Still, the game’s art, music, and highly engaging story kept these critics playing until the very end.

The Banner Saga would be broken up into a trilogy, with part 2 arriving in 2016 and part 3 arriving in 2018. These entries didn’t garner as much praise, or revenue, as the first one, but played together, The Banner Saga is a finely crafted, sweeping epic that, in my opinion, stands out as one of the best pieces of fantasy storytelling from this century.

From the highly acclaimed to the downright awful, we jump back to 2004 and Sega’s Sonic Heroes. After the fall of the Dreamcast, Sega moved into a third party developer role, putting out titles on each of their rival’s platforms. For their flagship Sonic series, Sega opted to port the Sonic Adventure titles to the Nintendo GameCube, so when it came time for a third entry in the 3D Sonic realm, the team was very familiar with the GC hardware, PS2 and Xbox, eh, not so much.

Sonic Team USA’s lead designer, Takashi Iizuka, did not want to make Sonic Adventure 3, as he felt the game was too limiting, only appealing to hardcore Sonic fans. His goal was to make a game that felt more like the 2D games, but in a 3D setting. His plan led to the creation of Sonic Heroes, which ditched the hub worlds and large, explorable worlds for fast paced, linear stages that emphasized speed, strength, and height. To help players experience these different styles, they were given three playable protagonists, Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails. Players could alternate between these characters instantly, to help them get through various parts of the stage and to allow for different pathways to explore on subsequent play throughs.

Not only were the core team of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails available, Sonic Team USA also added three more teams, each consisting of a fast/strong/flying character. “Team Dark” consisted of Shadow, Rouge, and robot E-123 Omega; “Team Rose” consisted of Amy, Cream, and Big the Cat; and “Team Chaotix” consisted of Espio, Charmy, and Vector. This also marked the first time that any character from Knuckles’ Chaotix had appeared in a Sonic game since the Genesis.

On paper, Sonic Heroes sounded like it would a fun game that harkened back to the 16-bit era; it did not. The game is utter dog shit, with all of the worst aspects of the 3D Sonic games you know and hate, including terrible controls, bad camera angles, and cheap deaths. The game’s graphics and sound were highlighted by critics, and they did see how the game tried to replicate the 2D Sonic games, but it was just a mess, overall. Despite some early praise, particularly from IGN who called it the best GameCube of January (was it the only GameCube that came out in January?), the years have not been kind to Sonic Heroes and, while it may fare better than some of the more recent entries, it’s still a bad game.

Hey, there was also a game that came out in 1994, it was called Choplifter III, and it was bad, bad, BAD! Not really a lot to say about this stinker, you fly a helicopter in a series of side scrolling stages, rescuing hostages and killing…someone…over and over and over. It sucks.

Moving to 1984, we have the laserdisc game Firefox from Atari. It was based on the 1982 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name and contained aerial images from the film, with the developers having to comb through roughly 20-30 hours of footage. Like the movie, players steal the top secret, Soviet fighter jet, the fictional MiG-31 Firefox, and attempt to fly it to friendly airspace. There wasn’t a lot of hub-bub over Firefox, though it is notable for being Atari’s only laserdisc game. According to Wikipedia, the only time Firefox sat at the top of the charts was in July of 1984. I don’t know why it took seven months for the game to finally catch on, but that appears to be the only feather in its cap. Don’t bother looking for this game anywhere, it was quickly forgotten and never got any console or PC ports.

Jumping over to notable films, the only one that actually came out in its proper year of release was 2014’s Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which asked the question “what if ‘Paranormal Activity’, but in the ‘hood?“. It’s both as bad as you think AND also not as bad as you think. How is that possible? Just watch it. As for our 2004 and 1994 films, Monster and Philadelphia, both got limited releases in 2003 and 1993, but didn’t go wide until January of the next year. I adore both of these movies, each containing powerful performances that led to Oscar wins for each of their lead actors, Charlize Theron and Tom Hanks.

1984’s film, the “Dirty Harry” pic Sudden Impact (another Clint Eastwood film), came out in December of 1993 and hung out in the top ten for a few weeks. Films stuck around in theatres for far longer than they do today, as there was no home video market, and they just didn’t release a ton of new product. Fun fact, this was the first, and ONLY, “Dirty Harry” film to feature the infamous line, “Go ahead…make my day“, which went on to become one the most quoted, and overused, lines in pop culture. According to legend, the line was added by screenwriter John Milius, who was an uncredited writer on Sudden Impact.

As for the notable albums, eh, take ’em or leave ’em. I’m not a big Stephen Malkmus fan, so 2014’s Wig Out and Jagbags does nothing for me. I do think it’s neat that Jason Schwartzman was the drummer on Phantom Planet’s 2004 self titled album and its the only reason I listened to it…and then found out he left the band, lol. It was produced by Dave Fridmann, the longtime Flaming Lips producer/collaborator. Trashed by Lagwagon was the first of many pop-punk albums to hit the music landscape in 1994. They would later be overshadowed in the year by Green Day and The Offspring (as well as major releases from NOFX and Bad Religion), but Lagwagon is still going strong today. 1984’s notable album is Milk and Honey by John Lennon & Yoko Ono…woof. It was released posthumously, three years after Lennon’s death, and is just, JUST, terrible.

The Banner Saga (PC) – Released Jan. 14^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Sonic Heroes (PS2/GameCube/Xbox) – Released Jan. 6^th, 2004: Wiki Link

Choplifter III (SNES) – Released Jan. 1994: Wiki Link

Firefox (Arcade) – Released Jan. 1984: Wiki Link

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I like Lagwagon, so here’s their single off the Trashed album:

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