PixlBit

Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind.

On October 18, 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was launched in the US. Among the 18 games released alongside it was Kung Fu. A rather unassuming title, Kung Fu has an intriguing history behind it. It started as an arcade game from Irem called Kung-Fu Master and was intended to be based on the movie Game of Death- Bruce Lee’s final film before he died. Later in the course of development, the story and characters were changed to become a tie-in to the Jackie Chan film Spartan X (aka Wheels on Meals). Most noteworthy about the game was its genre-defining gameplay elements that are considered by many to be the first example of what would come to be known as a beat ‘em up.

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Who are you, and what have you done with Jack Tretton?

Sony’s E3 press conference Monday night was striking for a lot of reasons, but the greatest contrast of all wasn’t between Sony and Microsoft. It was between Sony and itself.

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More of the same is still great, right?

Despite the dry and arid climate and the minor annoyance of rampant psychopaths and killer animals, I can say that I was genuinely excited to revisit Pandora with Borderlands 2. Unsurprisingly, little has changed since my last visit, which is both good and bad. Like its predecessor, traipsing across the landscape, slaughtering dozens of enemies along the way and looting everything in sight is highly addictive; however, despite the numerous tweaks made to the formula, the core experience isn't any better than what you saw the last time around.

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