October 25, 2013

Cracked: The 7 Least Necessary Pirated (i.e. unlicensed) Video Games

Unlicensed video games exist to fulfill impossible fantasies -- I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid I had a bootleg copy of Street Fighter II where you could literally fill the entire screen with Hadoukens, and a pirated version of Tiny Toon Adventures where Donatello and Fred Flintstone apparently attended Acme Looniversity together (my two greatest childhood dreams). These shitty knockoffs gave us the gameplay experiences that the real game companies couldn't or wouldn't give us, like impossible ports, badass kung-fu versions of kiddie characters, or 8-bit boobies.

Or at least some of them did. Other unlicensed games seemed like they could have only been summoned into existence by the sort of kid who got beat up by Magic-card-collecting nerds (so, no one). Bear in mind that most of the games I'm about to show you were made in the '80s or '90s, way before technology advanced to the point where any 12-year-old can hack a Mario game and replace everything with Nazi penises -- these atrocities took actual effort to create, even though their only possible use is being made fun of 20 years later.

Source: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-least-necessary-pirated-video-games/

October 19, 2013

PC Gamer: 14 space games you should be excited about right now

http://www.pcgamer.com/gallery/14-space-games-you-should-be-excited-about-right-now/

Space games are coming back. The Kickstarter success of big projects like Star Citizen have reminded everyone that there's still an audience for games set in the big black. New tech like the Oculus Rift gives us new ways to enjoy shooting lasers at other spaceships and the massive hardware leaps we've enjoyed since the glory days of X-Wing and Freespace 2 can support prettier space games built by smaller teams.

We've rounded up 14 of the most exciting candidates. Some are looking for funding on Kickstarter or upvotes on Greenlight, others are already out, but are still growing and being updated regularly. If you like space games, these are the ones you should be keeping an eye on right now.