Retro Game Weekly January 13th 2023
It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday!
Happy Friday Retro Gamerz!
I hope everyone had a great week! This weekend I’ll be offline while I’m in Amish country taking in the great outdoors. Besides retro gaming hiking is one of my favorite hobbies (along with being a great husband humble brag).
I hope your weekend is filled with tons of litness and fun! Now enjoy this week’s edition of Retro Game Weekly!
NHL Hitz 20-03 Review
This game has taken up quite a bit of my time these last two weeks. I am far from the biggest hockey fan but this game is so much fun. The hidden character teams, the over the top hits, and the game modes are enough to keep gamers occupied for hours on end.
Whether you’re playing the computer or beating your friends 8-7 in an absolute barn burner of a game you’ll have some fun with NHL Hitz 2003. The Midway arcade sports games were hit and miss for me. Blitz was always goated, but I never cared much for Slugfest (and that still rings true when I play it today). I’m happy to report that Hitz doesn’t fall into the miss category and I highly recommended this game to anyone who currently has a PS2,GameCube, or Xbox!
Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Replay Value: 10/10
Verdict: 86% B+
Top 5 PS1 Fighting Games
Tekken 3: I remember playing the ever loving crap out of this as a kid. There was no better feeling than calling my friend Dalton to come over, firing up the PS1, popping in Tekken 3, and giving Dalt the work! Hwoarang + ME = UNSTOPPABLE. I’ve talked about it in a previous video I made but the addition of Tekken Ball mode and Tekken Force really upped the replay value into the stratosphere. If you wanted some lighthearted Tekken fun you’d play Tekken Ball. If you wanted some old school beat em’ up fun you’d play Tekken Force mode. With the addition of my favorite Tekken characters (Hwoarang, Bryan Fury, & Forrest Law) The King of Iron Fist Tournament 3 holds a special place in my heart.
Bloody Roar: I’ll be honest I don’t have as many fond memories of this game. I played Bloody Roar on a Pizza Hut demo disc way back when. But from the little I do remember it was a solid fighting game. Having watched some gameplay on YouTube it definitely still holds up as a solid fighting game. The fact you could transform into a beast using “beast form” mid-fight was a huge plus for me. It took Mortal Kombat’s Animality and turned it up to 11.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy: Speaking of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. This game was kind of the tipping point for MK oversaturation. With 3 game releases from 1995-1996 (MK, Ultimate MK3, & Trilogy) Midway had the MK team seemingly burned out and it showed with Trilogy. What was supposed to be a collection of every fighter and stage from every previous game turned into some stages missing, some music missing, and some very broken gameplay (see Rain & Noob Saibot). The inclusion of characters who were missing in MK3 was a welcomed surprise, but the welcome wore out quick when you realized hardly any changes had been made and some shortcuts had been made to either get it out on time or save memory.
Having said that this game was in my rotation plenty as a kid. While it does have it’s flaws its MORTAL FREAKIN KOMBAT! And getting to play as Shao Kahn, Goro, Motaro, and Kintaro? Huge plus! This is one game I hope gets remastered and redone to rival the arcade release of UMK3.
WCW vs The World: When it comes to wrestling games for the PS1 WCW vs The World wins the main event! With the only competition around that time being WWF In Your House and WWF Warzone this was a squash match in that’d make Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar seem like a 60 minute epic. I remember getting this for Christmas and even though I was a huge WWF fan I played the crap out of this. With certain wrestlers/companies not lending their likeness to the game THQ did some fun dancing around this with some parody wrestlers. Some of the funniest ones that come to mind are Sherlock (Ken Shamrock), Major Tom (Terry Funk), and David Harley (Sabu). The controls are not arcade like the previously mentioned WWF games and require a bit of a learning curve. But once you get past that you have a solid wrestling game for the time. Ironically it seemed the video games for each company were a parallel of the real life Monday Night Wars with WCW kicking WWF’s ass in the virtual squared circle.
Knockout Kings 2000: Growing up Knockout Kings 2000 held a special place in my little gaming heart. With only 25 boxers on the roster some may wonder “didn’t you run out of boxers to play as?”. No. The create a fighter feature let you make yourself in video game form! I preferred to make myself 6’8 275 pounds (no fat) with a 85” reach. But besides your created fighter Knockout Kings 2000 offered some unique hidden boxers. From the rapper Q-Tip to an alien named Roswell you had some interesting boxers that had to abide by Judge Mills Lane rules of ring. The most interesting one to me was this nightmare inducing gargoyle.
There was also a ton of replay value outside of career mode thanks to the slugfest mode. This no holds barred fast paced boxing mode saw all fouls legal and had a super punch feature that’d see one punch KO your opponent. My fondest memory of slugfest mode was facing my dad’s friend (who had no knowledge of what slugfest mode was) getting humbled by 8 year old me in about 60 seconds.
Creator Shoutout
Starting this week I want to give a platform to other creators in the retro gaming community. There’s a lot of cool creators in this space right and it’d be a shame if they didn’t get some recognition for their hard work!
This week’s Creator Shoutout is Game Junction!
“We are a platform and network that covers everything from retro-modern gaming, pop culture, music, film, toys etc. Growing team of people that all work together to cover every avenue of content. That’s includes written content, short form, long form videos, streaming, podcasting, and eventually our website will be a hub for written content with articles, reviews, history, etc.
We’ll be expanding big time in the future. The Junction Network. We’ll have Anime Junction, Music Junction, etc.
Hoping to launch our website by the end of Q1 of this year and that will become our central hub for a lot of things.
As for our podcast it’s just a weekly podcast we have every Sunday with an invited guest that’s either in the industry, a creator/YouTuber, game developer, and just any area of pop culture.
Game Junction will always be the primary focus for us, but eventually we will be expanding. Anime Junction is next, but the focus now is getting daily content out, making connections. and growing the team.”
You can find all the links to Game Functions content on their LINKTREE.
It Came From The Tube!
One of my favorite channels Console Wars released their True Lies video. The humor sometimes misses but watching the comparisons of SNES & SEGA games is very interesting!
Touring a game room is always 100% a good time and I’ll 100% always have FOMO (soon enough I’ll have my own gaming room).
Checking out someone’s collection is always fun. And when they don’t have a dumb thumbnail to try and get into the algorithm I’ll tune in.
AVGN has been a staple of my YouTube playlists for years. Here’s season 12 in its entirety for your viewing pleasure.
Thanks for reading this week’s issue!
- Chavy
Love this! Keep it up!