A (Relatively) Short Dissection of Rocket Knight Adventures, My Favorite Game

I write a lot about game design on this blog.  I write about how to do it right, how to do it wrong, and why certain concepts are really important to consider.

Now, considering how much I perseverate on these topics, you might be wondering what the ideal is for me.  Sure, I've brought up some games I really like, such as Super Mario Brothers 3, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Saint's Row: The Third...

But what is the ideal?

The ideal is Rocket Knight Adventures on the Sega Genesis.

Let's start

Minesweeper Proves Presentation is Everything

You know what game I keep coming back to?  A game that is loaded with tension, strategy, risk, reward, and scaling difficulty?

Minesweeper.  And it's a great example of how presentation can be everything to some audiences.

Why isn't Terminator 2 a Terrible Movie?

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an amazing movie that is a huge part of 90's culture.  It had video games, t-shirts, action figures, a theme park attraction, comic books, and today has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Why?  It's fucking rad as hell, that's why!

So why does it look so absolutely horrible on paper?

Merry Turkeymas 2015 with Duke Nukem!

Want to help me keep making free games?  Try checking out my art shop and buying some cool merchandise with my characters and designs on it.  It helps me stay alive long enough to make stuff!

GameMaker: A Creation Suite for Novices to Professionals

GameMaker, a product of YoYo games, is one of those project managers that people love to hate.  While browsing the Steam Greenlight, you might often hear comments like, "This looks like some kid made it in GameMaker."  Its name evokes stigma.

However, recently, GameMaker's true potential has finally started to reveal itself.

Follow-up on "Worst Levels Ever"

A few days ago (as of writing this, as I am offsetting the publish for this post, it's probably been roughly a week) I posted a blog article about Mario Maker and bad levels.

In it, I had a section all about ultimate deductions to the "worst levels" possible in an old-school Mario game.  I described levels with no obstacles, levels with way too many enemies, and even levels with no level at all.

Mama mia!

After having a chat with my good friend Gabriel Priske (the dude I made See No Evil with) of Noetic Games, I came to some deeper inspection of what "bad" can mean in this context.

Do NPCs In Video Games Really Die?

Mortal Kombat

Since the early 90's, old people who had no idea what video games are and Florida lawyers who are willing to spin the grief of parents who have lost their children to violent crimes to make a quick buck have tried to question the issue of violence in video games.  I mean, it's undeniable that video games depict a lot of simulated death.

Now, those disrespectful politicians and opportunists who I mentioned above have tried to rattle our ears with the concept that our brains can't understand the differences between reality and video games; that these video games will rot our minds and turn us into killers.

Half-Life 2

Those crusty old farts are full of it.  We know that now.

But, what if we actually are all killers?  What if those virtual characters, packed with "AI", are actually living things that we're killing?