It’s time for new games, hooray!! Well, okay, “new” might, once again, be a bit of a stretch as our top titles include a remaster, an expansion, a digital version of an existing board game, and a football franchise that has basically put out the same game for the last 24 years. Check ’em out…

Top Releases:

The big release this week the point & click adventure game Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playground Remastered. This is the third, and final, entry in the Telltale series, which makes this developer Skunkape’s final remaster. These remasters have been met with positive reviews from both critics and players, with Skunkape doing a good job of retaining the original games’ humor and wit, while adding modern ameneties. The graphics have been updated, has a new look when you play the game in widescreen (which is, like, everyone now, right?), and features solid controller support.

Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered (PC/PS4/Switch/Xbox One) – Releases Aug. 14^th

Developed by: Skunkape Games
Published by: Skunkape Games

I’ll admit that I have no real connection to the Madden franchise, as big as it is. The trailer below is slick and features a modern remix of a classic song, but it does nothing for me. Do any of you play Madden, or sports games in general? I haven’t played a football game regularly since Sega’s ESPN NFL 2K5, a series I found to always be vastly superior, so I almost take Madden’s release for granted. The best thing I can say about this series is that it brings non-gamers into the fold and helps to continue legitimizing video games as a whole. Plus you can do fun dances after a good play or when you score a touchdown; which button makes me do the Rengade dance?

Madden NFL 25 (PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 16^th

Developed by: EA Orlando
Published by: EA Sports

The rest of this week’s new releases are a mish mash of smaller titles that may appeal to your niche sensibilities. There’s the expansion The Iron Rig for the 2023 game Dredge, the second piece of DLC to arrive. The Iron Rig includes a new area for you to explore, which brings in a slew of new items & enemies, and tells a new story.

For you board game fans out there we’ve got Overboss, a tile laying game in which you must construct the most difficult video game overworld map, with the winner getting the highest difficulty score. For you F-Zero fans out there, we still don’t have a new game in that franchise, but we’ve got another stab at it from an indie developer, this one is called Phantom Spark.

Finally, we have the retro inspired Castaway, which is not based on the 2000 film starring Tom Hanks, but is instead inspired by The Legend of Zelda, most notably Link’s Awakening. The main game features an overworld map with three dungeons to explore. Once you finish the game, you will be sent to a 50 floor “Death Tower” in which you must try to survive as long as possible.

Dredge: The Iron Rig (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 15^th

Developed by: Black Salt Games
Published by: Team17

Overboss (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 15^th

Developed by: Blanket Games/Brotherwise Games
Published by: Goblinz Publishing

Phantom Spark (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 15^th

Developed by: Ghosts
Published by: Coatsink/Thunderful

Castaway (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Aug. 16^th

Developed by: Canari Games
Published by: Canari Games

Everything else:

• Guayota (PC/Switch) – Releases Aug. 13^th
• To the Stars (PC) – Releases Aug. 13^th
• Love, Ghostie (PC) – Releases Aug. 14^th
• Gourdlets (PC) – Releases Aug. 14^th

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

Well, it’s notable release time and, frankly, none of these are doing it for me. Maybe they’ll inspire you, or bring up good feelings of nostalgia. Let’s check them out, shall we?

First up we’ve got the 2014 PS3 title Tales of Xillia 2. This is the sequel to, you guessed it, Frank Stallone Tales of Xillia, which takes place one year after the events of the first game. While Tales of Xillia sold well over one million copies, Xillia 2 only managed to move half a million units, falling well short of Bandai Namco’s target sales projection. Perhaps there was a lack of interest in the West due to the poor reception Tales of Xillia got from critics, who called that first game, boring, bland, and lifeless.

Whatever the reason, Xillia 2 came and went like a thief in the night, except it’s a thief that didn’t steal anything from you. It’s like they tried to open your kitchen window, found out it was locked, and then walked away, head hung low.

From 2004, we’ve got the GameCube exclusive Amazing Island from Sega. While the game’s cover seems to indicate that you’re going to play a Pokémon style, RPG adventure, Amazing Island is actually a mini-game collection where players compete with their team of monsters. While Pokémon tasks players with finding and catching monsters, Amazing Island has you collection monsters in one of three ways.

The first is to design your own creature using a preset torso/body, with players then drawing on limbs. If you don’t find yourself artistically inclined, or you don’t care, you can also take a five question quiz that will randomly generate a monster based on your answers. Finally, players can find and collect cards during their mini-game matches and add these pre-made monsters to their group.

Critics didn’t really care for the game, and neither did players. According to the website VG Chartz, Amazing Island only sold 60 thousand copies world wide; WORLD WIDE! You’d think this would place it among the most rare GameCube titles out there but loose discs only fetch about $15 bucks on eBay (probably because it sucks), though a boxed copy can go for over $100 bucks (probably because people are dumb and FOMO is real). Be warned that if you are thinking about picking up this game, do not go in thinking that you’re getting a cool Pokémon clone, you’ll just end up disappointed.

Our last notable game is the 1994 Sega Genesis title Taz in Escape From Mars. The sequel to Taz-Mania, players, once again, take control of the Looney Tunes character Taz as we attempts to escape the plane Mars after being kidnapped by Marvin The Martian. Spoiler alert, Taz DOES escape but, for some reason, decides to go back to Mars to get revenge on Marvin for kidnapping him. The game ends with Taz eating a giant pile of fruit. Throughout the game you will also see cameos from other Looney Tunes characters, such as Wile E. Coyote and Witch Hazel.

The game play in Escape From Mars is nearly identical to its predecessor, Taz-Mania, though there were some new moves added that players could do, like digging a hole in the dirt and exploring underground, and the controls, in general, were improved. Critics were divided on the game, with some calling it dull and uninspired, while others praised the gameplay improvements and graphics. There’s no sales data available for this game, but copies on eBay go for a reasonable $15 bucks, so I’m gonna say, based on the number of copies floating around, that it likely sold pretty well. The game is unavailable today on modern consoles, unfortunately, making emulation your best shot at playing it.

Moving away from games into notable films, 2014 gave us the movie The Expendables 3. While the two previous Expendables movies had hard R ratings for its violence, co-writer and star Sylvester Stallone and the production team decided to make Expendables 3 a PG-13 film. Their reasoning was that they wanted to expand the film to a wider audience and draw in more young teens & children. This change in tone was not a good plan, as the film failed to reach the same level of financial success as the previous entries. Stallone would later admit that going PG-13 was a bad idea and that any future installments would be rated R, which is exactly what happened when Expend4bles came out in 2023. Well, that movie was an even bigger failure, womp womp. Maybe the rating wasn’t the problem, maybe the movies just suck?

2004’s notable isn’t much better, it’s the long awaited sci-fi film Alien vs. Predator. Every pop culture nerd had been talking about this crossover since the 1980’s, building up this movie in their heads for over a decade. The result was, well, pure dogshit. Alien vs. Predator is one of the worst big budget, studio films ever made. I remember seeing this at an advanced screening with really high hopes and instead my buddies and I just ripped it to shreds with our witty remarks. A critic was there to review the film, sitting next to us, and she was clearly not amused by our comments. I bet she was one of those critics who says nice things about every movie so that they can get their name & quote on the DVD cover.

Our last notable film is Killing Zoe, the first of two films to come out in 1994 from Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (the second was Pulp Fiction, in case you were curious). While scouting locations for Reservoir Dogs, producer Lawrence Bender and the crew discovered a bank in Los Angeles they really liked. Not seeing it being of much use in Reservoir Dogs, Bender asked Roger Avary if he had any bank robbery scripts lying around. Avary didn’t, but he went ahead and wrote Killing Zoe in two weeks and handed it to Bender. Liking what he saw, Bender took the script to Tarantino who agreed to co-produce, with Avary taking on the role of director.

Killing Zoe is considered by critics and film historians as the first “Gen X heist film”, with Avary himself saying that he intended to make a movie that he felt captured the nihilistic attitude of his generation. In the film, a safe cracker named Zed (Eric Stoltz) flies to Paris to take part in a bank job with his childhood friend Eric (Jean-Huges Anglade). Before the heist, Zed calls an escort service and meets Zoe (Julie Delpy), a local call girl, having an instant connection to. Zed and Zoe agree to see each other again, but when Eric arrives he forces Zoe out and tells Zed to never sleep with prostitutes because he’ll get AIDS.

Later on, Zed joins Eric and his motley crew on the heist where things quickly go wrong, multiple people are killed and, as it turns out, happens to be Zoe’s day job. Things continue to get worse for Zed, Eric, and the crew as the movie continues, almost in real time, leading to a climactic showdown.

Now, the premise, cast, and filmmakers already make this movie sound fantastic, and it did find many appreciative audiences at film festivals around the world in 1993 and 1994, even getting its US premier at Sundance. However, when it released in theatres it was savaged by critics and became a box office bomb. While Tarantino had made a name for himself with Reservoir Dogs in 1992, he wasn’t a household name just yet. Killing Zoe wouldn’t really find an audience until after the release of Pulp Fiction, with that film becoming a huge cultural touchstone and earned both Tarantino and Avary Oscars.

Killing Zoe is a classic crime noir film, where everything goes wrong and then keeps going wrong. Avary had noted that he wanted the film to appeal to the exploitation crowd as well as the “coffee house” crowd (indie film nerds), and in the process I think didn’t go far enough in either direction for both. In the end, Avary’s writing is strong, but his direction is a bit lacking but, to be fair, this was his first film (he’s since gone on to direct two other films, Rules of Attraction and Lucky Day). Killing Zoe isn’t a terrible movie, it’s not even bad, really, but it’s not a game changer like Pulp Fiction.

Jumping into the world of music, 2014 gave us the album Blacc Hollywood from Wiz Khalifa. This was the rapper’s fifth studio album and first to debut at number 1 on the Billboard Top 200. Critics didn’t really care for it, giving the album below average ratings. This didn’t matter to the public, though, who happily picked the album up based on its hit single “We Dem Boyz”.

From 2004 we’ve got an album that spent a lot of time in my Discman, More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley. We talk a bit about Jenny Lewis a couple weeks ago when her 2014 album The Voyager came out, well Rilo Kiley was the group that gave her a name in the music industry, and it was More Adventurous that made the band breakthrough to the mainstream. Rilo Kiley was unique in that both of the lead singers/songwriters were child actors, with Lewis appearing in films like The Wizard and Troop Beverly Hills, while Blake Sennett had a starring role in the Nickelodeon show Salute Your Shorts.

This helped the group gain a following, just based on curiosity alone, but it was their impeccable songwriting that gained them loyal fans. Putting out two well received albums on independent labels, More Adventurous would be the band’s major label debut, promoted by two singles, “It’s a Hit” and “Portions For Foxes”, which would eventually find it’s way into Harmonix’s Rock Band series. Rilo Kiley was one of my favorite bands of the 2000’s and was instrumental in my relationship with my wife, as we both connected and bonded over our love of the band, as well as our admiration for Jenny Lewis. This is a great album and brings up a lot of happy emotions whenever I hear it, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

Finally, from 1994, we’ve got Dinosaur Jr.’s sixth album Without a Sound, which features the song “Feel the Pain”, one of the most recognizable rock songs of the decade, sure to show up on any 90’s playlist. After forming in 1984, the band signed with a major label in 1990, releasing albums that would help them gain a cult following, but it wasn’t until 1994’s Without a Sound that they finally hit the mainstream, with “Feel the Pain” reaching number 4 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

While unable to hit the same heights of success as other alternative bands from the 90’s, Dinosaur Jr. and its front man J Mascis have continued to put out albums with a steady pace since the release of Without a Sound, with the last one coming out in 2021 (Sweep It Into Space). While you might not have followed the band, or Mascis’, career since the 1990’s, I’m certain you’ve heard “Feel the Pain” at least once in the last few months, especially if you’re a rock fan. If you haven’t, well, check out the video above. It was directed by the legendary Spike Jonez, who was having a moment in 1994, directing the videos Weezer (“Buddy Holly” & “Undone (The Sweater Song)”) and Beastie Boys (“Sure Shot” & “Sabotage”).

Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3) – Released Aug. 19^th, 2014: Wiki Link

Amazing Island (GameCube) – Released Aug. 24^th, 2004: Wiki Link

Taz in Escape from Mars (Genesis) – Released Aug. 1994: Wiki Link

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