Welcome, everyone, to New Game Releases! There’s a large, varied, slate of new titles to check out, but I don’t think we’ve got that one, big game that everyone needs to check out. Besides, I’m sure you’re still playing Final Fantasy VII, or Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, or Persona 3: Reloaded, or Unicorn Overlord, or Helldivers 2, or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, or, something…

Not playing any of that stuff? That’s okay, why not check out Contra: Operation Galuga, a modern remake of the original Contra that released in arcades and, probably most famously, on the NES. While Operation Galuga will be familiar to fans of the original, developer WayForward has added in new stages, new enemies, new playable characters, new ways to play and, because we all demanded it, a story!

Contra: Operation Galuga (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 12^th

Developed by: WayForward
Published by: KONAMI

That’s pretty much it for big stuff. The next biggest game is probably Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, which is an upscaled re-release of the Star Wars: Battlefront games that came out nearly 20 years ago on the PC, PS2, and Xbox. The game is mostly the same as you remember it, but does contain bonus (new?) maps & characters.

Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 14^th

Developed by: Aspyr
Published by: Aspyr

Rounding out the rest of the best is Crown Wars: The Black Prince, a tactical strategy game; Outcast: A New Beginning, a third person, open-world action game that is a sequel the 1999 game, Outcast; and Highwater, a narrative adventure game about a group of friends living in an Earth ravaged by climate change. Highwater originally appeared on Netflix’s game service but is now making its way to PC and consoles.

Crown Wars: The Black Prince (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 14^th

Developed by: Artefacts Studio
Published by: Nacon

Outcast – A New Beginning (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 15^th

Developed by: Appeal Studios
Published by: THQ Nordic

Highwater (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 14^th

Developed by: Demagog Studio
Published by: Netflix/Rogue Games

Finally, we have Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. This video game/documentary hybrid tells the story of eccentric game developer Jeff Minter, creator of Tempest 2000, Polybius, and Attack of the Mutant Camels. 42 of Minter’s games are included in Llamasoft, which should put this on the radar of classic game enthusiasts everywhere.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Mar. 13^th

Developed by: Digital Eclipse
Published by: Digital Eclipse

Everything else:

Here’s a few more titles to check out, or not.

• Cat & Onion (PC) – Releases Mar. 12^th
• Goblin Stone (PC) – Releases Mar. 12^th
• Slavania (PC) – Releases Mar. 12^th
• Anominal (PC) – Releases Mar. 12^th
• The Last Stop (PC) – Releases Mar. 12^th

Notable Releases from 10, 20, and 30 years ago:

Alright, folks, it’s time to step back in time and see what everyone was playing ten, twenty, and thirty years ago; welcome to Notable Releases!

Starting things off, we have the 2014 deck building dueling game, Heartstone (or as it was called at release, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft). Hearthstone was created by a small team at Blizzard who were experimenting with the idea of taking the company’s love of table top card games and translating it into the digital space. Their goal was to make a digital game that felt just like the real thing, but from the glow of your computer screen instead of the glow of the fluorescent lights in your local FLGS.

Blizzard had, in fact, already made their own physical card game known as World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (or WoW: TCG, if you’re a dork), and Hearthstone built much of its gameplay around mechanics found in the WoW TCG, and even reused art and cards from the game (Blizzard discontinued the game one year before the release of Hearthstone…by coincidence, I’m sure).

For the small group at Blizzard working on Hearthstone, codenamed “Team 5”, it wasn’t enough that the game needed to mimic the table top TCG’s they loved, they wanted the entire experience to FEEL like you were playing a physical TCG. This came down to subtle, but effective features, such as the game starting with players opening a box of cards, cards shaking on screen when you grab them, and then being slammed onto the table when played. Things feel alive and tactile in Hearthstone, it is one of the ways that it draws players in and keeps them there, siphoning their money.

Hearthstone is completely, 100% free to play. Blizzard has not and will not (as far as we know) charge people to play Hearthstone. However, if you’d like more cards, better cards, and a chance to actually win the game on a consistent basis then, well, you’re going to need to spend money. Hearthstone, while not the originators of paid content in free-to-play games, certainly went out of its way to make sure that players felt the need to spend SOME money on the game. Your options for playing Hearthstone at a competitive level are usually limited if you aren’t shelling out cold, hard cash for the latest and greatest cards. In fact, with each expansion, your older cards either become obsolete or are severely underpowered, meaning that you’ll need to buy better cards in order to maintain any kind of parity with fellow players.

Despite the predatory “pay to win” mechanics of the game, critics were quite happy with Hearthstone, bestowing very high review scores on the game, including one 10/10 from Eurogamer. Players were also keen on Hearthstone, making it one of the most profitable games of the year, raking in millions of dollars for Blizzard. Like a lot of mobile/F2P games, Hearthstone exists primarily due to what are described as “whales”, super users who buy everything possible and spend hundreds, if not thousands, or dollars on these games. Back in 2017, it was estimated that, in order for a player to contain the entire collection of cards in Hearthstone, a player would need to spend a littler over $400.

Hearthstone is still going strong today and releases new expansions every few months in order to maintain player interest (and inject cash into the game). In fact, Hearthstone’s most recent expansion, Whizbang’s Workshop, will be out on March 19th, 2024 (that’s one week from today, as if this column being published). You can join the millions around the world that are still playing Hearthstone, if you choose, just get read to say goodbye to the money in your bank account.

Moving to 2004, we’ve got the second entry in the Tom Clancy Splinter Cell series, Pandora Tomorrow. For Sam Fisher’s second outing, developer Ubisoft decided to kind of stick to the same formula as the first title, with players sticking to the shadows and silently killing their enemies. However, while the core concept remained the same, some small updates helped keep the game fresh and helped players pull off their kills with greater efficency.

One of the biggest changes was the addition of a laser sight to Sam’s gun, allowing players to know exactly where their bullets would hit. Other changes include the ability to alert guards with a whistle, open doors while carrying a body, shoot while hanging upside down, perform a “SWAT turn” when moving past doors, and perform a half split jump.

Critics were completely blown away by Pandora Tomorrow, giving the game very high scores for its graphics and gameplay, with the Xbox version being the most beloved, where it held a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (the worst reviewed was the GameCube version, which was universally panned). Critics were especially drawn to the multiplayer mode, found only on the Xbox and PC, in which two teams of players competed against one another in an effort to complete various objectives (and kill each other). There was some criticism made about the short length of the game, its lack of major innovation over its predecessor, and its level design.

Heading to 1994, we’ve got one of the last NES games ever published by Nintendo, Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II. Picking up sometime after the events of the first game, protagonist Mike Jones is contacted, telepathically, by Mica, the princess of the Argonians (a race of aliens), whom Mike helped out in the first StarTropics game. From here, Mike is thrust into a time travelling adventure as he searches of Tetris blocks in multiple times periods, including Victorian era London, the Wild West, the Middle Ages, and the Stone Age.

As indicated by the game’s title, the evil Zoda, whom Mike defeated in the first StarTropics, is looking to get revenge on the boy who thwarted him, by sending out clones (I guess) of himself to these different time periods in order to take the Tetris blocks for himself. Critics didn’t really care for Zoda’s Revenge, giving it average scores and saying that it might have felt good a few years earlier, but was easily overshadowed by what was happening on 16-bit consoles. Subsequent re-releases by Nintendo omit all references to Tetris, calling the Tetris blocks , well, blocks, and changing the middle name of one character from “Tetris” to “Puzzle”.

Moving on to notable films, 2014’s title was inspired by a video game, Need for Speed. Not based on any specific entry, the movie is a mishmash of ideas presented in the Need for Speed games released in the 2000’s. The film was eviscerated by critics, calling it one of the worst movies of 2014, though some praise was given to Aaron Paul’s performance. 2004 saw the release of the psychological horror film Secret Window, from writer/director David Koepp, which stars Johnny Depp playing a writer who is accused of plagiarizing a short story written by a psychotic dairy farmer. It sucks.

1994’s notable film is the third and final entry in the Naked Gun series, 33 1/3: The Final Insult. The movie contains a barely there plot about a retired Frank Drebin being pulled back into a Police Squad case involving a mad bomber who intends to blow up The Academy Awards. While not as fresh or funny as the first Naked Gun film, The Final Insult did mange to have me laughing hysterically at a song & dance number Frank unwittingly partakes in at the Oscars, ending with Frank dropping poor Pia Zadora into the orchestra pit. It does, however, feature a very crude, very unnecessary trans joke, similar to one seen in Ace Ventura only a few weeks earlier, and puts a dark stain on an otherwise “just fine” comedy. Oh, and OJ Simpson is in the movie as well, he’d be famous for a different reason in just a few short months.

In music, 2014 gave us the album Suck My Shirt from punk band The Coathangers. This all-female group from Atlanta, Georgia were on their fourth album, the first without their longtime keyboardist, and saw the foursome pare down to a group of three. The songs on Suck My Shirt were praised by critics who felt the band had tightened up their sound, and it would be their most commercially successful album to date. As of late, the band hasn’t done much together, though they do continue to put out music as solo artists. One of my favorites is Stephanie Luke’s NRCSSST, who you should all check out.

2004’s notable album is Misery is a Butterfly by the shoegaze-y alternative band Blonde Redhead. I remember downloading a bunch of songs from this album off of Limewire back in 2004 and listening to the tracks on my iPod Mini, and I can’t decide if I like “Elephant Woman” or “Equus” better.

Finally, 1994 saw the release of Superunknown by the alternative band Soundgarden. Released the same day as Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, both albums helped to set a tone for the rest of the year as a hard rocking, in your fucking face year of music. Any remnants of the 1980’s hair metal sound that dominated rock & roll in the 1980’s was virtually erased in 1994. What Nirvana had planted a few years earlier was now full grown and taking over all of music. Superunknown is a phenomenal album, containing the all-time classics “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun”. Soundgarden had surpassed their grunge contemporaries and put out an album that redefined the genre, leaving a path for others to follow. It was a very exciting time for me as a kid who just turned 13, the world was starting to open up to me and I was ready to jump into it.

Yes, March 12th is my birthday, so this is, of course, my birthday week! Looking back on these moments in pop culture that all arrived on or around my birthday is really special. I’m happy to be able to share this week with them and, in some funny way, I feel a connection to each. Have a great rest of the week, folks, I’ll see you here next Tuesday!

Hearthstone (PC) – Released Mar. 11^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (PC/Xbox) – Released Mar. 23^rd, 2004: Wiki Link

Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II (NES) – Released Mar. 15^th, 1994: Wiki Link

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