Top Releases:

• Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 10^th
• Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 10^th
• Fairy Tail 2 (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch) – Releases Dec. 13^th
• Alien: Rogue Incursion (PC – VR required/PS VR 2) – Releases Dec. 16^th
• Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 17^th

Holy moly, we made it through another year of video games! Yes, my dear friends, this is our last New Game Releases column of 2024, starting next week the special coverage begins with the 2024 Buyer’s Guide, the Notable Events of 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2014, and then our 2025 Preview.

That’s all in the future, let’s talk about the present, what have we got in store for the rest of the year? Our top game of the week is the beat ’em up Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. Play through the game as one of the five rangers, alone or with friends, and take down the evil Rita Repulsa before she destroys whatever city the Power Rangers lived in.

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 10^th

Developed by: Digital Eclipse
Published by: Digital Eclipse

All you Soul Reaver fans are in for a treat this week as the two games from that series are getting remastered with modern graphics, revamped controls, and better camera movement. On top of that, players will also get a glimpse of some of the cut content from the original games, including levels and a night & day cycle.

Out other big game this week is Fairy Tail 2, a massive RPG based on the popular anime. Players can relive the exciting moments from the ending of the original series, taking part in epic battles against some of the most powerful enemies from the show. There is also a brand new epilogue featuring story content you’ve never seen before. That’s probably a big deal to someone who’s a fan of the show. Not me, I don’t care, but you might, and isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remastered (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 10^th

Developed by: Aspyr/Crystal Dynamics
Published by: Aspyr

Fairy Tail 2 (PC/PS4/PS5/Switch) – Releases Dec. 13^th

Developed by: Koei Tecmo
Published by: Koei Tecmo

Our last two games seem like they’re really interesting, but are probably really shallow in terms of content. First we have Alien: Rogue Incursion, a VR game for PC and PS5, which has players taking on the role of Zula Hendricks, a character that has appeared in multiple Alien books and comics over the last few years, gaining a pretty devoted following. The game looks to be combat focused but with some stealth elements that should keep you on your toes. I can only imagine how terrifying it will be to get killed by a Xenomorph in VR, which means I will probably never play this; probably.

Our last game, Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, is a pirate themed tactical RPG played on a hex grid map. That sounds like a winning combination, until you see the publisher is Microids. While the company has been around for almost 40 years, they specialize in low budget, AA games that don’t quite hit the mark. While I can’t vouch for the merits of every game they’ve published, a look at some of the most recent titles, like, the terrible XIII remake, Alfred Hitchcock – Vertigo, Syberia: The World Before, Flashback 2, The Smurfs: Village Party, and Totally Spies!: Cyber Mission, don’t give me much hope that Flint will be any better.

Alien: Rogue Incursion (PC – VR required/PS VR 2) – Releases Dec. 16^th

Developed by: Survios
Published by: Survios

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (PC/PS5/Series X|S) – Releases Dec. 17^th

Developed by: Savage Level
Published by: Microids

Everything else:

As for everything else, the title I’m most excited for this week is Taito Milestones 3. Regular readers know that I’m a big retro game fan, so this collection of old Taito arcade games from the 1980’s right up my alley. Other than that, Shiren the Wanderer, which came out on consoles earlier this year, is coming to PC, and the game Ketsu Battler wants you to shove your Switch Joy-Con into your pants and fight people by shaking your ass at them. What a world!

• Taito Milestones 3 (Switch) – Releases Dec. 10^th
• Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island (PC) – Releases Dec. 11^th
• Ketsu Battler (Switch) – Releases Dec. 12^th
• On Your Tail (PC) – Releases Dec. 16^th

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

Welcome to Notable Releases, the part of the column where I like to take a look back at all of the games, movies, and music that dominated our lives 10, 20, 30, and 40 years ago. Let’s take a look!

Games:

From 2014, we’ve got the first person puzzle game The Talos Principle from developer Croteam. Best known for the over the top action game Serious Sam, Croteam went a bit more muted for Talos, swapping extreme gun fights with quiet, methodical puzzles.

In The Talos Principle, players take control of a humanoid robot who exhibits extraordinary human like behaviors. The story of the game revolves around a fictional Greek philosopher, Straton of Stageira, who argues that humans are just biological machines and are no conscious of than than the mythological bronze man, Talos, found in Greek mythology.

The game started to take shape while the team were working on ideas for Serious Sam 4. They wanted to incorporate interactive environments and, in the process, discovered that they could make puzzles using these new concepts. With about 80% of the puzzles completed, the team decided to hire two writers, Tom Jubert (who wrote the FTL narrative) and Jonas Kyratzes (who wrote the narrative for The Sea Will Claim Everything). It was their job to connect these puzzles under one over arching narrative, which is where they idea of Talos and the fake Greek philosopher came in.

After a good showing at Sony’s E3 press conference in June of 2014, The Talos Principle would arrive on PC, first, the following December. Reception to the game was positive, praising the game’s tough puzzles and even more thought provoking story. Critics were really jazzed on the game’s narrative, calling it a wonderful vehicle to deliver ideas about humanity’s responsibility to technology and how that technology also has a responsibility to humans as well. For real, technology. I won’t smash you if you just work when I need you to work; got it? I’m looking at you, wireless mouse.

The Talos Principle was named among the best games of 2014, a rare feat after coming out so close to the end of the year. Notable game developers like Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft, and Alexander Bruce, creator of Antichamber, were among the game’s biggest fans and supporters. The success, both critically and commercially, of the game led to a sequel in 2023, The Talos Principle II. Both games are still easily available today on PC or any modern console, or you can wait for the remaster, The Talos Principle: Awakening, coming in early 2025. It might be worth your time if you’re looking to get existential this holiday season.

2004’s notable title is the Game Boy Advance game Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Set between the PS2 games Kingdom Hearts and Kingdome Hearts II, Chain of Memories serves as a bridge between the two titles, setting up characters and scenarios that would be vitally important to the series long, overarching story.

While the PS2 games were real time, action RPGs, Chain of Memories used a card battling system, in which players would use cards to attack, summon characters, and heal, among other actions. The card system proved divisive among fans and critics, many of whom wanted a more straightforward fighting system like they saw in the PS2 titles.

The story in Chain of Memories is about as confusing as you can imagine, but the general premise is that Sora, Donald, and Goofy find themselves summoned to Castle Oblivion by the shadowy Organization XIII. Upon entering the castle, Sora and his friends lose many of their memories from the events of the first game, having to replay many of those memories again (which is also what the cards are made up of). As they progress deeper into the castle, they will lose more memories but, somehow, gain new ones. Yes, it’s a Kingdom Hearts game.

Later, after beating the game, players can replay the game as Riku, unlocking even more of the story that will be vitally important to understand plot points in later Kingdom Hearts games; who needs a life? Just live vicariously through the characters in Kingdom Hearts!

Chain of Memories, despite praise from critics, is to date, the least successful game in the series, commercially. That doesn’t mean it sold poorly, it moved over 1.5 million copies around the world, it just wasn’t as successful as any of the other games in the series. I guess the card battling system really wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

From 1994 we’ve got Bungie’s first major success, Marathon. This was the fourth game from Bungie, who had a good working relationship with Apple, and was kind of the Mac’s answer to Doom which, by 1994, was still not available on the machine (it would arrive in Dec. of 1995).

In Marathon, players take on the role of an unnamed security officer who must stop an alien invasion of the space station Marathon, which was sent out into deep space to colonize uninhabited planets. Marathon used an engine that was similar to Doom’s but was just slightly more powerful. It still used 2D sprites and textures in a pseudo-3D world, but it could do slightly better in its environment creation than Doom could.

When it released, Marathon was a commercial and critical success, begin seen as the killer app for the Macintosh, and a way to get Apple’s PC’s on par with DOS & Windows based machines when it came to gaming. One thing to note, though, a commercially successful game on the Macintosh is not what you might consider a large amount of units sold. In fact, Marathon had only sold a little over 200k copies by 2002. This is perhaps one of the reasons by Bungie would jump ship to Microsoft and create Halo for them, instead of Apple.

For almost 20 years, Marathon was an Apple exclusive, with the title getting an iOS port in 2011, before finally hitting Windows based PC’s in 2024 with a release on Steam. A reboot/remake of the game slated to come out sometime in 2025, after a delay from 2024, and it supposed to be an always online, multiplayer shooter. Bungie’s new owners, Sony, have seen a couple of their other always online, multiplayer games fail recently (Concord…) and may be getting cold feet. I guess we’ll what, if any changes, this new Marathon gets before it hits store shelves.

Our last notable game comes from 1984, the arcade classic Marble Madness from Atari. The game was, at the time, a technological breakthrough for Atari as it was their first arcade game programmed in the C language, it was the first Atari game to use Stereo sound, and was their first title to be built on Atari System I hardware, a new, more powerful circuit board for their arcade machines.

Marble Madness was developed and designed by a new, young hire at Atari, a guy named Mark Cerny, that would eventually go on to work for Sega, Crystal Dynamics, Universal Interactive (where he hired Naughty Dog and Insomniac to make games for the PlayStation), before becoming a consultant where he would mainly work with Sony (even going so far as to be the lead designer of the PS4 and it’s best game ever, Knack).

Anyway, enough about what Mark Cerny would do, let’s talk about his first major success, Marble Madness. Played with a trackball, players would guide their marble, you know, the little round, glass balls, down a series of ramps and platforms in a race to the finish. Players would need to avoid enemies and traps which could bump into them, knocking them off the edge of the platforms, shattering them, or sending them into the oblivion.

The genesis for the idea to make Marble Madness came to Cerny after a game based Michael Jackson’s Thriller was cancelled. Atari wanted unique, clever games that could stand out amongst the crowed arcade landscape that was still reeling from the big crash of 1983. Cerny had been an avid minigolf player and thought that hitting a ball would be fun, Atari didn’t. Undeterred, Cerny thought about making a racing game where players would move a ball down a very long track, but the technology for a two player game of that magnitude was not available. Still undeterred, Cerny changed it from a two player race to a race against the clock; Marble Madness was born.

Played in an isometric view, the world of Marble Madness is a polygonal, M. C. Escher wonderland that was built in a very complex way using what was, at the time, very high end computing skills. Marble Madness even employed ray tracing, almost four decades before it would be one of the biggest gaming buzz words of the 2020’s.

With a small release in arcades in December of 1984, Marble Madness quickly became a huge hit for Atari, selling 4,000 cabinets shortly after launch. However, after only six weeks on the market, Marble Madness started to flop, big time. It seemed that players didn’t spend a lot of time with the game, finding it to be brutally difficult, and would rather spend their time with a game that maximized their play time per quarter.

A sequel would be put into development in 1991, however, Atari found that the demand for Marble Madness, and games like it, had dropped dramatically, seeing them be replaced by fighting games like Street Fighter II. Despite the poor reception to the arcade game, Marble Madness would receive multiple home ports, including a successful NES version in 1989 (probably why they thought about a sequel).

Over the years, Marble Madness’ arcade release has been re-evaluated by players and critics, who have come to appreciate the game’s complexity and unorthodox gameplay. It has appeared on several “Best of…” lists over the last 40 years, helping to solidify its place in video game history.

Movies:

In notable films, 2014 saw the release of Selma, Ava DuVernay’s biopic on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., her third major motion picture, which starred David Oyelowo in the lead role. Initially offered to Lee Daniels in 2009, the movie was almost put into production with him in 2010 but, unfortunately, Daniels dropped out of the project in favor of what would be his 2013 film, The Butler.

In 2013, producers approached DuVernay about helming the film, which would be her biggest to date. She accepted and began to make revisions to the script, including the removal and/or changing, of some of King’s most famous speeches as the licenses were, bizarrely, owned by Dreamworks and Warner Bros. as they intended to, one day, make a King biopic directed by Steven Spielberg.

After receiving a limited release on Christmas day in LA, New York, and Atlanta, the film went wide in January of 2015 where it was well received by critics and audiences, though it did stir some minor controversy for what were described as “historical inaccuracies”. These included making President Lyndon B. Johnson more villainous than he really was, and omitting many of the Jewish civil rights leaders that worked with King.

Selma received only two Oscar nominations, Best Picture and Best Original Song, winning for Original Song. The lack of a Best Director and Best Actor nomination was seen as a hard rejection by the mostly white Academy voting body and was instrumental in the “Oscars So White” movement. DuVernay seemed incensed that Selma did not receive more nominations and blamed systemic racism in Hollywood for its failure to champion and lift up Black voices in the industry.

It was a bold move and it kind of paid off, as the Oscars have, seemingly, been more conscious of the films and contributions of non-white actors, directors, writers, and others. I didn’t think I’d be writing four paragraphs about Selma, but here we are. It’s certainly earned its right to be a notable film.

From 2004, we’ve got one of my favorite films, Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Talk about a complete tonal shift from Selma, The Life Aquatic is a screwball comedy starring Bill Murray, as the titular Zissou, who finds out that he has an adult son played by Owen Wilson.

What follows is a silly movie about love, revenge, and forgiveness, with Zissou on a mission to kill the shark that killed his best friend. Along the way, Zissou and his son both fall in love with a reporter played by Cate Blanchett, with Murry now in his second (or third, I guess, if you count Tenenbaums) love triangle in a Wes Anderson film.

While Anderson’s previous efforts (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums) built upon his acclaim and commercial viability, The Life Aquatic was a financial and critical disaster. Audiences hated the film, giving it a “D” rating, and it was one of the biggest flops of 2004, making $30 million off it’s $50 million budget (not counting any marketing costs).

In the years that followed, The Life Aquatic has started to gain a cult following, particularly among Anderson fanatics. The films’ whimsical nature, which was rejected at the time, has become more acceptable, again, mostly among his most hardcore fanbase. This was Anderson’s first film to not feature Owen Wilson as a co-writer, and it shows. Anderson’s films after The Life Aquatic have become more bizarre and storybook-like in nature, giving some highs, like The Grand Budapest Hotel, and some major lows, like Asteroid City. Can the king of whimsy get back on top and stop fucking around? I sure hope so.

1994’s film isn’t just notable, it’s notorious. I’m talking about the hilariously bad Street Fighter. Based on Capcom’s video game series, the movie follows Col. Guile (played by Jean-Claude Van Damme) as he attempts to defeat the evil terrorist M. Bison (played by Raul Julia in his final role). When I was a kid I was so, god damn, excited to see this movie and I begged my parents to take me during Winter Break; I should have just stayed home.

A horrible script, horrible acting, and devoid of anything from the games, Street Fighter was a joke. The film’s writer/director, Steven E. de Souza, claimed to be a huge fan of the games but decided to omit many of the supernatural elements from Street Fighter II, saying that he wanted to use them in the film’s sequel which would obviously get made, right? His hope was that Street Fighter would be the next Star Wars, but with some James Bond flair.

The film was a modest hit, opening in third behind The Santa Clause and Dumb & Dumber, but still managed to squeeze out $66 million world wide (doubling what The Life Aquatic would make ten years later). The film was completely rejected by critics, who called it one of the worst movies of 1994. Audiences were a bit more kind, rating it a “B-“, but I have to tell you, folks, Street Fighter is absolute dog shit. Poor Raul Julia, the man was brilliant in 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, and his last cinematic moments were in the god damn Street Fighter movie. Life is cruel.

From 1984 we’ve got John Carpenter’s Starman, a sci-fi romance about an alien (played by Jeff Bridges) who comes to Earth, wanting to bring peace & love, but is instead hunted by the U.S. government so that they can kill and dissect him; USA! USA! Seeing his film career starting to die out after 1983’s The Thing, Carpenter opted to make anything thrown his way; Starman was one of them.

The script for Starman was originally in competition with a Steven Spielberg script called Night Skies. Both were about alien visitors that run amok. The bigwigs decided that Spielberg’s script was “too Disney” and they told him to fuck off; that movie would eventually become E.T., idiots.

Starman had the bad luck of opening against two other major science fiction films, the long awaited sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, 2010, as well as David Lynch’s long awaited adaptation of Dune. All three movies were financial disasters, but Starman fared the worst. It wasn’t all bad news, though, as Jeff Bridges would be nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars for his role.

Albums:

It’s just after midnight as I write this, I’m tired so let’s just kind of speed through these. 2014’s notable album is Sucker by Charli XCX. This was her second studio album and fared much better than her first, debuting at no. 28 on the Billboard Top 200. The album was propelled by the hit single, “Boom Clap”, which was also featured in the 2014 film The Fault in Our Stars. Critics loved the album as well, calling it a rallying cry for feminists and placing it on multiple “Best of…” lists for the year.

2004’s notable album is the debut from singer/songwriter John Legend, Get Lifted. Look, folks, I don’t really get the whole John Legend thing. He’s a handsome guy who plays piano and has a nice voice which, I guess, are traits people like; I’m not one of them. My opinion on the guy doesn’t mean anything, though, because Get Lifted was huge and propelled John Legend into superstar status.

The album’s second single, “Ordinary People”, was his breakthrough hit, where it peaked at no. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album would win the Grammy for Best R&B Album, while Legend received the Best New Artist Grammy, and the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance Grammy. Good for him.

Our 1994 notable album is one that I loved as a kid but can’t really stomach anymore, Bush’s Sixteen Stone. Talk about an album that was everywhere in the 90’s, Sixteen Stone featured five singles, three of which were a massive success, “Comedown”, “Glycerine”, and “Machinehead”.

I used to watch so much MTV just so I could catch the videos for these songs but, after a while, I started to lose interest in Bush. I don’t know what happened, maybe because Gavin Rossdale is kind of a prick (or just too handsome. Is that why I don’t like John Legend? No, that can’t be it).

Sixteen Stone was a huge album for Bush and turned them into international rock stars. The album peaked at the no. 4 spot on the Billboard Top 200, going 6x platinum. People fucking LOVED this album and this band. Me? Not so much.

Alright, 1984, what do we got? Oh, Agent Provocateur by Foreigner. This was the band’s fifth album and, while it wasn’t as commercially successful as their previous releases, it did contain their only no. 1 hit, “I Want to Know What Love Is”. The treacly ballad stood at the top of the charts for two weeks and was a driving force behind the album going triple platinum in the US.

Critics hated the album, calling it a continued decline into mediocrity for the band that once rocked and rolled in the 70’s. They were trying to fit in-between the worlds of Led Zeppelin’s hard rock sound and Chicago’s soft rock sound, failing at both. Still, it didn’t matter, the band was giving audiences what they wanted, and sometimes that’s all you can do.

The Talos Principle (PC) – Released Dec. 11^th, 2014

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA) – Released Dec. 7^th, 2004

Marathon (Mac) – Released Dec. 1994

Marble Madness (Arcade) – Released Dec. 1984

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Holy shit, is that it? Yep, that’s it, we’re done! Oh my gosh, another year down, folks, I’m so happy. The fun doesn’t stop though, I have a bunch of games to go through and not a lot of time. I should start now, no, wait, it’s nearly 1am, I should sleep first, right? Yes, no, yes, I mean, maybe? No, no! Go to sleep. Yeah, okay, sleep is good, I like sleep. Who are you?

Oh, here’s my favorite song of 2024.

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