PixlBit

Did you know that Bally/Midway, the company behind Defender, Joust, and Mortal Kombat, once had its own console? This video takes a brief look at the Bally Astrocade and what is widely considered to be its best game, The Incredible Wizard. This is a near-perfect conversion of Midway's arcade game, The Wizard of Wor. 

The Texas Intstruments TI-99/4a was the second, more successful iteration of the world's first 16-bit home computer. Here's a look at one of its most iconic games. Tombstone City is a multidirectional shooter set in a futuristic Arizona, where you must attract new residents by battling aliens spawned by mated pairs of saguaro cacti.

On the latest episode of Down Home Gamin, I discuss a game that was a staple of early childhood. Penetrator, developed by Beam Software of Australia, is a Scramble clone made for the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, and C64 in 1982. It has a number of features which set it apart from the many other Scramble clones of its time. 

Early 80s video game technology had come a long way since Pong and Computer Space, but there were still limitations on how realistic graphics could be. Therefore; a lot of game designers drew on classic animation for inspiration, since the slapstick action and visuals were much more achievable with the technology that was available. Mario, for example, was inspired by Popeye.

Mini-consoles have been a thing for well over a decade now, thanks in large part to the Atari Flashback and all those ATGames Genesis consoles. Mini-consoles experienced a huge surge in popularity with the success of the NES Classic and SNES classic in 2016-2017. Suddenly, everybody was putting out mini-consoles - the PlayStation Mini, two interations of mini Genesises (the OG Genesis and the 1994 revision that came with Sega CD games), and even a TurboGrafx-16 Mini. 

I finally got my new recording studio set up, and this is the first video I've made in four months. It covers the recently released Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life for Switch. This is a remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, my first farming sim and one of my favorite Gamecube games. The re-release remasters the graphics and sound, and combines elements of the Gamecube releases (which were two separate releases for male and female players) as well as the PS2 Special Edition (thankfully not the jankiness of the PS2 version). 

...Or is it DOA? I always get those two mixed up.

In honor of MAR10 Day (March 10), I did a little video on Mario's debut game. It also happens to be my all-time favorite arcade game, as well as one of the very first video games I ever played, even before Pac-Man, which was the first video game for a lot of people of that time.

So, it's another February and another BaD. I've never been able to keep up with BaD, though I've always been able to contribute something.