March is for movies, and with the Oscars crowning its achievements, I thought I'd crown one of mine. Braveheart (1999 Eidos Interactive, Paramount Pictures & Twentieth Century Fox) has long since been a troublesome game to run, being on my radar right from the very beginning of this sight. The wartime strategy game is now fully playable thanks to some testing and tweaking so go try it out for yourself!
That alone might've made it my pick of the month, but it's another strategy game that takes that for me. The Movies (2006 Lionhead Studios Limited). This business sim from the mind of Peter Molyneux has you create an entire movie studio where you can even make your own in-engine shorts. You won't get anything Oscar-worthy, but it's a fun ride nonetheless.
To round out the stacked month is the much-requested voice-recognition FMV adventure The Jungle Book (1996 International Business Machines Corporation & Disney), the cinematic platformer based on Michel Ocelot's underseen animated movie Azur & Asmar (2006 Ouat Entertainment & Emme), and the obligatory yet entertaining educational tie-in Shrek 2: Activity Center - Twisted Fairy Tale Fun (2004 DreamWorks L.L.C. & Activision Value).
As for gaming updates, the excellent adventure game The Gene Machine got some quality of life improvements including an upgrade to DOSBox-X and controller support. The addictive GameCube puzzle game ZooCube got a handheld companion with the GBA port as well as some Retroarch improvements. Yutaka Saitō's Yoot Tower also saw an addition with its Japanese-exclusive iteration called The Tower II. It's been minimally translated by me to the best of my abilities so we can get a look at those region-locked addons. Lastly, the early Metroidvania, Eye of Horus, got a complete overhaul with emulator updates, remapped controls and the addition of the inferior Commodore 64 port and the definitive Atari ST original. See each of their game pages for a full rundown on their changes.
Click on the images below to head on over to the game page.
The first half of this month was spent anticipating the Oscar ceremony itself. I gave you all my predictions during my February post, and as time went on I got increasingly unsure of my choices. I could see Sinners - one of my favourites of the year - being snubbed for most awards, and the talk would be it being one of the Academy's biggest losers (they are notoriously anti-horror), but it got more love than I thought. That loser talk instead shifted to Marty Supreme. In the end, I correctly predicted 15 out of 24, but I ain't mad. Those that won were well deserved in an incredibly strong year.
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As an aside, my PC decided to pack up on Friday, hence the potential delay of The Movies review. I've been wanting to get an upgrade sometime soon thanks to Windows 10 closing up shop but financial pressures said otherwise. I'll do my best to sort something out so I can get you more stuff next month, but consider this a heads up just in case I don't.
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2006 Ouat Entertainment & Emme
Windows
Platform-Fantasy-Arabian-Movies
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1999 Eidos Interactive, Paramount Pictures & Twentieth Century Fox
Windows
Strategy-War-History-Movies
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1996 International Business Machines Corporation & Disney
Windows 3.1
Adventure-FMV-Disney-Animals!-Movies
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2 |
2006 Lionhead Studios Limited
Windows
Strategy-Management-Business Sim-Hollywood
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2004 DreamWorks L.L.C. & Activision Value
Windows
Edutainment-Mini Games-DreamWorks-Shrek-Movies
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I was very happy with the Sinners love too, and also Amy Madigan from Weapons winning Best Supporting Actress. Two horror films got respect this year! That must be a first.
ReplyDeleteQuote: "That loser talk instead shifted to Marty Supreme."
And who among us wasn't delighted to see Mr Timothee Jenner being branded a big loser? Let's be honest: watching him squirming in the front row and being humiliated by a ballerina was schadenfreude at its finest.
I just hope he'll get his act together before the Dune 3 promo starts. Drop the showmance, for a start. His stupidity has taken down his last two films. (Zero Oscars for A Complete Unknown was even more surprising considering it faithfully recreated the music of so many Academy members' youth.) I don't want him to take Dune down, too.
Could you give the 3dfx mode for the game Hyperblade another try?
ReplyDeleteWow, I remember the early YouTube days of watching people make movies with The Movies. Amazing to think this game hasn't been made available for current platforms.
ReplyDelete