At Long Last, “Pokemon Rusty” Gets the Finale it Deserves
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/10/17 at 03:20 PM CT
I’ve been a fan of the Dorkly YouTube channel’s “Pokemon Rusty” webseries since the very first episode, which was posted in November of 2012. For those who aren’t in on the joke, “Pokemon Rusty” is a spoof of the original Red/Blue/Yellow versions of Game Freak’s “Pokemon,” but instead of following the adventures of a competent up-and-coming pokemon trainer as he struggles against adversity to become the very best (like no one ever was), we instead get to bear witness to the world’s literal worst pokemon trainer, a bespectacled Jewish kid named Rusty whose Dad wants him to give up on this ‘pokemon’ nonsense to work in the family deli (Presumably, Rusty would still get to hang out with lots of Delibirds… eh? Eh!?).
Naturally, Rusty doesn’t listen to his parents (he is legally an adult at 10 years old, after all), and goes about following in the footsteps of his pokemon idol, Red. Rusty isn’t actually malevolent, but his sheer incompetence leads …
Review Round-Up: Summer 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 09/02/17 at 02:00 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
This Summer, I chased – and caught! – the 16-bit dragon. I had an excellent time with “RetroArch” and partied like it was 1996 with a whole slew of SNES and TG-16 titles I’d never played before (and since many of them are super short, I was able to submit a LOT of reviews). My favorite game of the quarter, though, turned out to be the 2006 Game Boy Advance “EarthBound” sequel, “Mother 3.” You have no idea how close that game came to receiving a perfect score… It’s criminal that Nintendo won’t officially localize it.
“Terranigma” – 4/5
“Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light” – 4.5/5
“Deus Ex: Human Revolution” – 3/5
“Dungeon Defenders 2” – 3/5
“Bahamut Lagoon” – 4.5/5
“Do-Re-Mi Fantasy: Milon’s Quest” – 3.5/5
“Star Trek Timelines” – 3/5
“Mother 3 (a.k.a., …
Backlog: The Embiggening – September, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/27/17 at 03:10 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! It’s Back to School time, once again! All the cute, little mistakes that resulted from birth control failures are now out of Mom’s and Dad’s hair for the vast majority of their time. And when the little sweeties are at home? They want to hunker down and play some garbage, like ‘Call of Duty’ or “Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds.” Really, what’s the point in releasing a bunch of games when the least discerning portion of your audience is pre-occupied with other things? Maybe the parents get some good games to help them forget they have too many (any) children? Nah! Don’t bet on it!
SHOOOOVEL HOOOOOOOO! September is bringing forth the largest single dump of shovelware we’ve had in a long time. As is traditional for September, all of the annual Sports franchises are getting new releases, which accounts for nearly half of the crap. I remember when each console got, like 1 release for any given sport. Yet another …
Microsoft Should Stick with Hardware… Just Not Consoles
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/20/17 at 03:49 PM CT
In recent years, I’ve had ample opportunities to field test Microsoft gaming hardware… and I really like it! This praise may come as a surprise in light of my constant exhortations that Xbox is a plague upon console gaming and should never have existed in the first place. However, my view on the Xbox itself has not changed in the slightest. I do, however, love Xbox peripherals.
One simple truth that has held for nearly the entire duration that videogaming has existed as a form of entertainment and a hobby is the fact that buying third-party peripherals is not a particularly good idea. Companies like Mad Catz and Nyko have been around seemingly forever, peddling their shoddy, cheap knock-off controllers, memory cards, etc. and leaving gamers with malfunctioning piles of junk. While it is true that some third-party companies, like Hori, manufacture some acceptable-quality specialty controllers – things like Fighting sticks or Racing wheels – unless you’re buying something …
TurboGrafx-16: Now on MeltedJoystick
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/13/17 at 02:31 PM CT
We’re constantly working to make MeltedJoystick better. The most recent improvement to the site is the addition of TurboGrafx-16 (and TurboCD/TurboDuo) titles to the database. You can now officially, rate, list, and review all of the forgotten classics from Hudson’s/NEC’s 4th Gen contender (which was obliterated by the SNES and the Genesis).
What? You never owned a TG-16 or knew anyone who did? Surely you owned a Wii or knew someone who did, right? A number of TG-16 games got a second chance at fame and fortune during the 7th Generation when they were released on Nintendo’s Virtual Console via WiiWare (now known as Nintendo Network). Even if you aren’t a fan of paying Nintendo’s inflated prices for what amount to heavily-DRMed ROMs wrapped in single-use emulators, you can easily experience the entire breadth of the TG-16 library thanks to the No-Intro Collection on The Internet Archive and an emulator like Retroarch.
While the TG-16 was by-and-large known for its …
5 Crappy Games That Scratch a Unique Itch
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/05/17 at 04:12 PM CT
Some games are good, some games are bad: Such are the facts of life when it comes to the production of any media. The most insidious games, however, aren’t particularly good – they can even be downright crap – but something about them is so unique, so untapped by copycats or clones that the only way to experience said something is to suffer through the rest of the game’s flaws and annoyances.
What games affect me in this way? Read on to find out.
5. Spore
I still haven’t played the original “Spore” yet. I never bought it back in the day because EA was experimenting with the horrendously evil SecuROM DRM scheme, but I did get to see Chris play his copy, and I played the spinoff title, “Spore Hero” on Wii. “Spore” is unique in the way it lets the player design their creatures, shepherd their evolution, and follow their progress from primordial ooze to spacefaring civilization. Maybe one day I’ll get around to playing the DRM-free GOG version of the game I …
Backlog: The Embiggening – August, 2017
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/30/17 at 04:01 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Summer is winding down already, and all of the cute, little children (read: insufferable semen-stains) will be back to school, and no longer clogging up ‘Call of Duty’ servers 24 hours a day. The looming approach of August also means I’ll be another year older and another year more jaded. So let’s see what kind of garbage I can hope not to get for my birthday.
The shovelware is fairly light for August. One licensed anime game based on ‘Naruto’ is joined by two worthless annual ‘sport’ releases, ‘Madden’ and ‘F1’ (racing not being a real ‘sport,’ and all).
The ports, remasters, and compilations are still plentiful, though. Modern-day ‘Wolfenstein’ is getting a two-pack compilation, while ‘Mega Man’ is getting a second legacy collection. Critically-ignored “Troll & I” as well as Telltale’s “Minecraft: Story Mode” are coming to the Switch, while the saddest of the sad console peasants …
Console Gaming is Dead: It Just Doesn't Know It Yet
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/23/17 at 03:39 PM CT
For years, we heard the cries of those in the know: “PC gaming is dead! Rampant piracy, nobody is buying new PCs, and the market is stagnant! DOOOOOOOOOOM!” But now the tables have turned, leaving the future of console gaming a big, empty void filled with more questions and uncertainty than hope and excitement.
It all started when Microsoft tried to do a console and couldn’t get their heads truly into the console space. They ended up creating a horrific chimera that bolted a lot of negative PC gaming aspects from the 90s and 00s onto a unified, console-style hardware target.
Sony followed suit with their disastrous PlayStation 3, and transformed the appliance-like simplicity of the PlayStation brand into a knock-off PC that could even run Linux at one point in time. I have called this elision of PC gaming and console gaming a “singularity” moment, but it has ultimately proven to be better for one side than the other.
Nintendo, however, has proven that there is …
How I Destroyed Console Gaming: A Tale of Superstition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/16/17 at 03:40 PM CT
I generally pride myself on not being a superstitious person. Witnessing the *facepalm*-worthy antics of my Catholic grandmother growing up pushed me away from superstition and toward the path of rationality, even while my personal interests in the paranormal and supernatural tugged me back toward madness.
No matter how hard I try to discard all superstitious nonsense in my day-to-day life, clearing the temple of my mind for Truth and Reason, there lingers a vague feeling that a specific thing I did during the 7th Generation had far-reaching symbolic significance and somehow, via proxy, the actions of one insignificant man reverberated through the ether, destroying the part of the videogame industry I held most dear.
What is this terrible thing I did? No, it wasn’t building a gaming PC and switching to Steam and GOG for 90%+ of my gaming needs: That was a reaction to the continuing downfall of console gaming. One cannot immediately assume that those who leap from the deck of …
First Official Pathfinder CRPG Coming from Paizo and… Owlcat?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/09/17 at 03:15 PM CT
Remember back in October, 2016 when I got all excited about Obsidian Entertainment, the semi-Indie RPG developer crafted from the remains of Black Isle Studios, hinting at a collaboration with Paizo Productions, the company that kept tabletop RPGs alive while Wizards of the Coast worked through a number of psychological issues?
I don’t know if I should still be excited or not. Paizo has officially announced that, yes, they will be collaborating with a videogame developer to create a cRPG based on the “Kingmaker” Pathfinder Adventure Path… but the developer in question won’t be Obsidian. Instead, Paizo will be teaming up with an unknown quantity called Owlcat Games, an Indie outfit so new and untested they don’t even have a Wikipedia entry at the time of writing.
Owlcat Games consists of former employees of both Nival Interactive and My.com. It appears to be a foreign company, perhaps Polish or Russian, due to the rather… ethnic quality of the development team’s …
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