Friends! Here is the next chapter of Virtual Boy Works for you—a look at Hudson's Panic Bomber. I was worried that once we got past Wario Land, the quality of VB software would plummet precipitously. Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be a real concern here; this isn't a masterpiece, but it's certainly solid. And best of all, this is the one VB game you can actually play on a somewhat contemporary platform, as the PC Engine version is available on Virtual Console for Wii U.<...
2019-02-19 16:59:59 +0000 UTC
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This is the one everyone's been waiting for, so... enjoy.
2019-02-17 13:52:24 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a while since the last video upload, but I've been using a different workflow for the past few weeks—rather than producing a single episode start-to-finish each week, I've been stockpiling scripts and footage. I have a month's worth of that material in the bag now, so over the next week or so I intend to edit together those episodes—which will, astonishingly, take us to the midway point of the Virtual Boy library. Wowzers.
So now I have a question for yo...
2019-02-12 21:55:59 +0000 UTC
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I'm powering through this series in a hurry—but can you blame me? Mario Clash is pretty cool and I wanted to talk about it! It's also one of the least-played games to ever to include "Mario" in the title. Man, Nintendo needs to rework these games for some other platform already, geez.
2019-01-23 01:45:32 +0000 UTC
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Another VB Works, and a bit of a change in plans. I was planning to complete VB Works as a 1:1 series—one episode per each game. But man, there just wasn't much to say about these two... and I have trouble imagining I'd be able to squeeze an episode apiece out of the system's two Tetris variants and two bowling games. Plus, I'd rather compress these lean episodes into combo episodes and save a weekly publishing slot for something more interesting. So, here's your first Virtual Boy ...
2019-01-20 18:18:59 +0000 UTC
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Another week, another Virtual Boy game that reaches for the moon but stalls out around the Lagrange point. (I don't know if that's a good metaphor.) Red Alarm offers lots of little details to love, but it needed a bit more time in the oven... or maybe just a more potent piece of hardware to run on.
I may go back and revise this episode. Benj Edwards is supposed to be delivering a dual-stick Virtual Boy controller soon, and this seems like a game that could really...
2019-01-16 17:40:57 +0000 UTC
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This game is very cool, and I am very terrible at it. It's a tragic state of affairs. But please do enjoy the video regardless!
2019-01-07 00:04:07 +0000 UTC
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Happy new year! Let's start the year the right way: With a huge video retrospective about an all-time classic. Yeah!
2019-01-02 00:07:50 +0000 UTC
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It strikes me as poor form to end/begin the year on a sour note like D-Force, so I've put together a fresh episode of Virtual Boy Works to help present a more auspicious temporal handoff. Thank you again for your support in 2018 and see you in 2019! Unless I manage to put together another video over the weekend. Who knows, man.
2018-12-27 17:00:03 +0000 UTC
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I guess it's only fitting to end 2018 with the absolute worst game I've tackled all year. It's definitely been that kind of year.
On the plus side, this means I've cleared the decks for a strong start to 2019 with more interesting and enjoyable games! Assuming the world is still around in a few weeks. The way the news has been going the past few days, I have my share of concerns.
2018-12-24 17:25:39 +0000 UTC
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Hello everyone—
I'm both excited and proud to present the very first episode of Virtual Boy Works.
I've wanted this project to happen more or less since I kicked off Game Boy Works (née World) nearly five years ago, and it's only thanks to a handful of recent community-driven technological innovations that I'm finally able to make it work. Thanks to the new Virtual Boy RGB-out mod by Furtekk, I can capture footage from the Virtual Boy in high-definition. Ad...
2018-12-22 00:31:13 +0000 UTC
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I apologize for trolling with this video and my pronunciation of one of the game's titles. It's not really in the spirit of the season.
I'll make up for it next week, though. Promise.
2018-12-16 22:42:49 +0000 UTC
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This episode was supposed to encompass both Home Alone and D-Force, but I ended up being so frustrated by their respective failings that I went on a bit at length and had to break the episode into two individual pieces. Dragging out the agony, I guess.
Don't worry, though. There's some very good stuff in the pipeline.
2018-12-06 03:39:29 +0000 UTC
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Getting ahead of the proper schedule here, I know, but I'm just so in love with this era of NES I can't help myself. Section-Z has always been one of my white whales, because the NES version is daunting. I think I'm eventually gonna best the Disk System version, though. I just gotta keep flinging myself against it and eventually I'll win...
We're very, very close to Zelda and Metroid now. Ohhhh baby.
2018-11-26 23:45:56 +0000 UTC
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Happy Thanksgiving, people who celebrate that holiday this week! Here's a suitably thanks-worthy game: Rygar for NES, a pioneering title that holds up exceptionally well for its age. It helped stoke a young Jeremy's enthusiasm for exploratory action games, and it remains a good time despite its lack of a save feature and the need to grind a bit more often than would be strictly ideal.
2018-11-23 22:03:38 +0000 UTC
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So... we've kind of hit one of my all-time favorite stretches of NES releases on NES Works. I should be spacing these games out a bit to keep from having the good stuff clustered up all at once, but, well—it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, you know?
Anyway, here's Kid Icarus.
2018-11-14 23:42:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone, I've returned from my badly needed vacation and have gotten back up to speed with Video Chronicles. Here's another curiously timely NES Works—this time coinciding with this week's Nintendo Switch Online release of Mighty Bomb Jack. It's a more interesting game than many people realize, I think! One you can probably actually complete on a platform with save states...
2018-11-11 17:57:08 +0000 UTC
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A little something to keep you warm while I'm out of the country. And another fortuitously timed one, too, what with the real Ikari Warriors appearing on Switch soon! (I didn't time this one deliberately the way I did the Castlevania episodes... just random luck.)
I'm away from keyboard for quite a while, so it'll be a couple of weeks before the next Works video, I'm afraid. But on the plus side, I got my streaming setup fixed, FINALLY, so there'll be much more of that from now on. See y...
2018-10-26 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary story! Nope, it's just me and some more Castlevania history. My one regret with this episode is that the complete playthrough I recorded a couple of weeks ago bizarrely failed to capture the audio, so I had to rush to capture replacement footage and didn't have time in my schedule to record the final stage. Oh well.
Also, for some reason I mispronounced "arpeggio," and I'm not sure what that's about.
Uh, but the point is, here's a Su...
2018-10-24 18:50:24 +0000 UTC
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You know, I do believe this is a pretty good game.
Next week we'll look at the Super NES remake... assuming I can record footage with working audio.
2018-10-21 13:53:34 +0000 UTC
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Two more Super NES games before we launch into the final stretch of 1991. One is very, very good, and one is... decidedly not.
2018-10-14 19:23:22 +0000 UTC
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Yeah, I'm going with the head-slapper of a localized title on this one, because they kept it for the reissue. Authenticity and all that, I guess.
Aaaaaanyway, here is the second episode of SEGAiden. I won't be able to keep up a biweekly schedule for this series, not with all the travel I have coming up in the next month, but I will do my best!
2018-10-06 01:32:39 +0000 UTC
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I admit that I failed to drum up any enthusiasm whatsoever for this video. But it's not strictly because this is a pair of games about sports; it's because this is a pair of games that approach those sports in a predictable, repetitive fashion. Both True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club and Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 attempt to do something interesting, but I'm not sure how successfully they pull it off.
Thankfully, there's plenty of interesting stuff to look for...
2018-10-01 14:34:43 +0000 UTC
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Somehow I managed to put together two 14-minute videos yesterday. Yeah, I don't know how that happened. Anyway, here's an episode slated for the far future, by which I mean a week and a half from now. It's three, three, three games in one!
2018-09-23 12:32:18 +0000 UTC
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Yes, I'm afraid so. I've gone and kicked off an extra side series called, wait for it, "SEGAiden." This won't supplant the usual Video Works features and will only appear when I have time to produce a second video in a given week. But hey! SEGA.
I'll let the video itself explain the rest...
2018-09-22 23:22:39 +0000 UTC
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Well, uh, the hurricane more or less ended up missing us, so none of those dire predictions of being without power and utilities for days at a time seem likely to come true. As a result, I ended up getting a little bit ahead of myself here with another NES Works episode.
Oh, and there's something secret in the works, which hopefully will come to fruition within the coming week... stay tuned.
2018-09-15 19:33:34 +0000 UTC
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Had to get this episode up early since there's no telling what my power and internet situation will be for the next week or so. Hurricanes, man.
This look at Pro Wrestling should give you an idea of what I have in mind for the revamped format for Video Works, as it touches on three games rather than one. Pro Wrestling, the main feature, gets about 8 minutes of dedicated dissection, while both Soccer and Volleyball get 2-3 minutes apiece. The idea isn't to sh...
2018-09-13 12:16:36 +0000 UTC
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I decided to take a brief foray into the 8-bit world this week to explore a game I enjoyed as a kid and that, happily, holds up better than I had feared (even if I had to cheat to get to the end). Trojan is another one of those transitional games by Capcom that would be eclipsed by their later works, but don't let the neon-grid-box fool you. This is a solidly designed action game, converted intelligently from the arcade. If it were just a little less unfair, it would really be somethin'...
2018-09-09 12:18:11 +0000 UTC
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Metroidvania Chronicles returns, finally! But now with a different name and stuff. Along with a slightly different format that includes a "footnotes" section about games that don't quiiite make the cut of my entirely arbitrary and opaque rubric for putting together this series.
After the deluge of metroidvania releases over the past month or so, I have a LOT of ground to cover with this series. I don't know how frequently it will be recurring (maybe monthly?), but I promise not not to le...
2018-09-01 14:34:54 +0000 UTC
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At the moment I'm poring over press proofs for Game Boy Works Vol. I (with the second book's proofs slated to arrive soon), but I've also been poking away at the next volume: Super NES Works Vol. I. As I mentioned before, the original plan was to have that book completed this fall... but while that would have been possible, the quality of the production would have suffered. I've decided to give it a little more breathing room and make it the best thing I can possibly manage, an...
2018-08-29 14:51:35 +0000 UTC
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