The slow trickle of new games continues but hey, at least we have some stuff that’s KIND OF interesting. It’s DLC, but it seems to be damn good, yes, damn good indeed.

First up is The Rising Tide the latest piece of DLC for 2023’s Final Fantasy XVI. After adding new story content and quests in the previous DLC, Echoes of the Fallen, The Rising Tide looks to do the same, sending players to the land of Mysidia. If that sounds familiar to you then perhaps you’ll remember it as the town from the opening of Final Fantasy IV, where players are introduced to Cecil as he steals their crystal. With a heavy emphasis on Eikon’s in this game (also known as summons, espers, primals, etc.), the main focus of this DLC is Leviathan, with players trying to rescue the Dominant that controls the beast. Tons of new quests and locations will be available, as well as a new weapon from Final Fantasy XIV, the Curtana.

Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide (PS5) – Releases Apr. 18^th

That’s not all, folks! We’ve also got a big piece of DLC for the game Dead Island 2 called SoLA Festival. This new area takes place at a very popular Southern California music festival called Coachella…I mean SoLA…and has players taking part in a brand new story with a bunch of missions to go on. Players will need to contend with powerful new enemies by finding even more powerful weapons, like the Ripper, which is a baseball bat combined with a circular saw. Sounds pretty sick.

Dead Island 2: SoLA Festival (PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Apr. 17^th

It isn’t all DLC this week, there’s ACTUAL brand new, full games coming out too. First up is Harold Halibut, a narrative adventure game that has been created using stop motion animation. The game has already won several awards and multiple film and video game festivals around the world, if reviews aren’t terrible than this could be one of the bigger indie titles of the year.

Harold Halibut (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Developed by: Slow Bros.
Published by: Slow Bros.

If stop motion adventure games aren’t your thing but top down combat/action titles are, then check out Kingsgrave. After being resurrected, players take on the role of a deceased monarch who must rebuild the kingdom and return peace to the land. The developers say that they were inspired by The Legend of Zelda, so no pressure to deliver on that.

Kingsgrave (PC) – Releases Apr. 17^th

Developed by: Egg or Chicken Games
Published by: Alawar

Ports and Re-releases:

Dave the Diver (PS4/PS5) – Releases Apr. 16^th
Grounded (PS5/Switch) – Releases Apr. 16^th

Two pretty ports are hitting PlayStation and Switch this week after Xbox/PC exclusivity. First up is the 2023 indie darling Dave the Diver, where players catch fish all day and serve sushi all night. There’s more to it than that, but finding out what that is is part of the fun.

While Dave the Diver was a third party title made Xbox exclusive for a short window, our other port, Grounded, is a first (or is it considered second) party title now leaving Microsoft’s Xbox and coming to rival consoles. It’s no secret that the Xbox isn’t doing as well as Microsoft hoped and they gotta pay for all those studios they bought over the last couple of years, so here we are. What is Grounded? Uh, something to do with kids being shrunk down to the size of bugs and wandering around their backyard. While the game claims it is a single player title, I feel like it has been built to be fully enjoyed as an online co-op game, which is a hard pass from me.

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

Welcome to Notable Releases, yours, mine, and our favorite feature of the week. We’ve got some good stuff to talk about so let’s not waste anymore time, here we go!

Our first notable release is the 2014 microgame collection NES Remix 2. While it presents itself as a sequel, NES Remix 2 is really just a stand-alone expansion for 2013’s NES Remix for the Wii U. For those unaware, the NES Remix titles are, essentially, a collection of speed runs for some of Nintendo’s most well known first party NES titles. Most are fairly straightforward, such as the task to “Stomp on 3 Goombas before time runs out” while others can get a little more creative, mixing elements from two different games, such as completing the first level of Donkey Kong as Link, with the inability to jump.

While NES Remix 2 is mostly a glorified expansion, it does contain a couple of unique game modes. The most significant is the inclusion of Super Luigi Bros., which is the complete Super Mario Bros. game, but with the levels played from right to left instead of left to right. The other game mode is the Nintendo World Championships Remix, which lets players take part in a modified version of the original Nintendo World Championship from 1990. Players around the world could compete against one another, with the best scores posted to online leaderboards. The kicker here is that players must have already owned the first NES Remix in order to unlock this mode.

NES Remix 2 didn’t score as well with critics as the first game did, with some feeling that Nintendo hadn’t done enough to address the criticisms of that title (uninspired micro games, failing to fix/tweak the poor controls of some original titles). The one major issue that Nintendo did address was the lack of leaderboards, though critics felt that this was not enough to pull the game out if its already, sort of, dull repetitiveness.

Later on in December of 2014, both NES Remix titles would be bundled together as NES Remix Pack, with a physical release, while a 3DS version called Ultimate NES Remix would be released on 3DS at the same time. Since this is Nintendo we’re talking about, you can already probably guess about the ability to play this on a modern console…the answer is no.

Jumping to 2004 we have the RPG Shining Soul II from Grasshopper Manufacture and Nextech. While a sequel to the 2003 game Shining Soul, the game is actually part of a larger franchise owned by Sega, simply referred to as “Shining”, which, like Final Fantasy, are all (mostly) standalone games with little to no connection.

The Shining series has games that fall into one of three categories; dungeon crawler, tactical strategy, and action RPG. Shining Soul II fits into the “action RPG” category and is most closely related to something like Diablo. I didn’t play this back when it released so my knowledge is pretty limited here, unfortunately. According to Wikipedia, players choose from one of eight different classes (doubled from the first game), each able to be customized per the player’s desires. Some weapons can be shared between classes, the spear, for example, but are wielded differently, i.e., ranged vs. melee.

Critics felt mostly positive about the game, not really loving it or hating it. Shining Soul II feels more like a game people want to OWN rather than a game they want want to PLAY. Copies on eBay can run you around $80 bucks for just the cartridge, while boxed copies are going for over $300. Emulation is your friend here, folks, if you’re really dying to check the game out.

From 1994 we’ve got one heck of a game, easily one of the greatest of all-time; Super Metroid. The third entry in the series, Super Metroid picks up almost immediately after the events of Metroid II, with Samus bringing the Metroid larva to a group of scientists so it can be studied. However, shortly after dropping off the creature, the scientists send a distress signal. Samus returns and finds that all of the scientists have been killed, and that the larva has been stolen by her nemesis Ridley. Samus gives chase and ends up back on planet Zebes and discovers that the space pirates have rebuilt their base and that, shockingly, Mother Brain has lived!

What can I say about Super Metroid that hasn’t been said a million times over? The game is a masterpiece, one of many from the SNES library, that cemented the console as one of the greatest of all-time. Super Metroid did what all 16-bit next-gen titles should have done, by creating an enhanced version of its 8-bit counterpart. The game play remains largely unchanged between Metroid and Super Metroid, but includes so much to make the quality of life better. Samus can now crouch, she can aim diagonally, there’s a fucking MAP (finally!), and the inclusion of several new suit upgrades and weapons allowed for much more interesting and varied settings.

I don’t remember the exact day and time that I got Super Metroid, but being so close to my birthday I can only assume I bought it with money I probably got from my grandma’s. I spent countless hours in my room playing Super Metroid either alone or with by buddy Javier. He both had a copy and would play our own games, giving each other hints about where to go next, how to beat bosses easier, and the way to get the best ending. 1994 was a really fun year for me, with a lot of great games, movies, and music. Being 13 with no cares in the world, not responsibilities, it really is kind of the beginning of the end of your childhood. I remember that time fondly and, like a lot of people, have been chasing the high of that age ever since.

Movie time! 2014 saw the release of Transcendence, a trippy sci-fi flick from cinematographer turned feature film director, Wally Pfister. Pfister had built up a pretty good resume since getting his start in 1991, working with Christopher Nolan on the films Memento and The Dark Knight trilogy. For Transcendence, Pfister took a very hot, very well liked script from the famous Hollywood “Black List” (considered the best unproduced screenplays) and even got Nolan to produce the film. Unfortunately, the whole thing ended up being a huge mess, with critics and audiences ripping the film apart; yeesh.

2004 gave us the highly anticipated sequel Kill Bill: Volume 2, closing out Quentin Tarantino’s kung-fu epic in an very quiet, subdued fashion. While Volume 1 had multiple high octane fights and a driving soundtrack, Volume 2 felt more intimate, more thoughtful, and more dramatic, with audiences shown the events from The Bride’s wedding and why she felt the need to exact such calculated revenge. Volume 2 feels more like a character study, something close to what you might have seen in a 1970’s drama by Bob Rafelson, or Scorsese (a la, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore). While quieter, the film still packs a mighty punch to heart, both metaphorically and, in Bill’s case, physically.

1994’s notable film is a total guilty pleasure, Brainscan. This pulpy sci-fi/horror flick is quintessential 90’s, featuring “It” kid Edward Furlong, hot off his role in Terminator 2. Brainscan finds Furlong, a pop culture obsessed recluse who spends all his time playing video games, listening to alternative music, and watching old movies, becoming an unwitting killer when the game he plays, Brainscan, turns out to be real. The cause of Furlong’s suffering is a malevolent being named Trickster. This creature has magic powers, or something, and uses the the Brainscan video game to hypnotize people into committing acts of violence.

Brainscan is a terrible movie, with some absolutely awful acting, mostly from Furlong. The movie is only saved by the fantastic Frank Langella who plays a hard nosed detective investigating the murders conducted by Furlong. Trickster is a fine enough antagonist, clearly designed to try and appeal to the new crop of Gen-X college guys and their millennial teen brothers, but a poor critical reception and abysmal box office scrapped any plans for a series. Again, this is not a good movie, like, AT ALL, but it is such a time capsule, a brilliant “you had to be there” vibe that is a hyper exaggeration of what it was like to be a teenager in the 1990’s. I’ve always thought that it took four years for a decade to find its identity. Brainscan is proof of that.

Those were some cool movies, the music, on the other hand…eh. First, from 2014, we’ve got Pop Psychology from the band Neon Trees; I hate this band. Moving on, 2004 gave us Fancy Ultra-Fresh from the electro-pop group Freezepop. This band is likely familiar to many of us in the gaming hobby due to their inclusion in multiple Harmonix games, including Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band. While it doesn’t contain any of the songs that more casual listeners may know from game soundtracks, it does contain a few fan favorites, including “Bike Thief”, “I Am Not Your Gameboy”, and one very familiar to Mega64 fans, “Parlez-Vous Freezepop”, which the comedy group has used in their Cosplayerz video for over 15 years.

Finally, 1994’s notable album is Throwing Copper by the band Live. It’s…okay, I guess. I mean, it gave the band a career, so that’s nice, but in relation to the other alternative albums that released in 1994, Throwing Copper doesn’t quite stack up, in my opinion. It’s a little boring, a little cheesy, and note as “edgy” as other albums were, I guess. It’s not bad, but I don’t really enjoy it either. On a personal note, I remember going to the library and checking out an older Live CD (yes, you could check out CDs) and being really disappointed with how bad it was. That’s it. That’s my Live story. See you next week.

NES Remix 2 (Wii U) – Released Apr. 25^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Shining Soul II (GBA) – Released Apr. 20^th, 2004: Wiki Link

Super Metroid (SNES) – Released Apr. 18^th, 1994: Wiki Link

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