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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (25 hours, Nintendo 64)

Nintendo 64 cartridges always looked like tombstones to me. “Here lies Link, hero of Hyrule.” Maybe I’m losing my mind. Anyway, when I was a kid, we’d get a new Nintendo 64 game once every three or four months. We didn’t have the World Wide Web, so my childhood friends and I discovered good games through magazines and word of mouth on the playground. Ocarina of Time was the game to own when we…

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My Experience in Ship of Harkinian

…or, How to Play Ocarina of Time in Widescreen at 240 Frames Per Second Ship of Harkinian has been out for a few years now. For those unfamiliar, it’s a fan-made PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Apparently, this was no easy task—hats off to the team for pulling it off. The port itself contains no copyrighted data, so you’ll need to provide your own ROM file to keep things legal.…

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I'm calling this one PC20

… to celebrate twenty years of building PCs. Hard to believe I built my first computer in 2005 but it’s true. I had some money from the job I was working at a restaurant, and I wanted to spend it on something cool. You could actually build a pretty nice rig back then for sub-$1000. My first machine played Half-Life 2. Yep. Anyway. Inside this new computer is 32 (!) GB of DDR5 RAM, as well as a…

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (6 hours, Steam)

Remember in my Castlevania III review when I said, “I only wish there were more NES-style Castlevania games”? Well, this is about as close as we’re going to get in the modern era. The Good This is very much an NES-style Castlevania-esque game, but with modern conveniences like frequent checkpoints and upgradable power-ups. However, it’s far from a Metroidvania. The first four or five levels are…

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Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (12 hours, PC via Archive.org)

Editor’s note: I managed to get through about half of this game before giving up and watching the remainder as a longplay. The game is simply too darn hard. Someone at Konami wanted to create a Castlevania game with style. As a result, we have Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. While the team succeeded in the style department, the game’s difficulty is a major drawback. I initially looked into…

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Super Castlevania IV (8 hours, SNES via bsnes)

I’m a big fan of Castlevania games. I was in my prime gaming years (early to mid-twenties) when the Igavania games were coming out on the DS. While Dawn of Sorrow is essentially a perfect game—from gameplay to graphics, music, and controls—Super Castlevania IV isn’t flawless, but it comes close. On the downside, the game is short (it took me less than ten hours to finish). However, at its best,…

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Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (13 hours, NES via RetroArch on a MacBook Air)

I noticed a couple of things right away about Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. First, for at least the first three-quarters of the game, the difficulty is significantly lower than in Castlevania I—which is a welcome change. At one point, I was so busy whipping chandeliers that I ran out of time, but aside from that, the early portion of the game is a cakewalk. However, the final quarter ramps up…

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Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (10 hours, SNES through bsnes)

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island contains a frustrating jump.  It allows you to levitate, and it allows you to gain just a little more height than you initially got.  But if you’re not intimately familiar with this jump, it’s the difference between making it to the platform you wanted to hit, or falling into an enemy trap.  That’s not to say this is a bad game.  This is among the best…

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Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! (12 hours, SNES through bsnes)

I played Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! with the rewind function turned on in RetroArch (an emulator front-end), which takes the game’s default difficulty level of “frequently frustrating” down to “stupidly easy.”  Still, it’s fun to see what’s different about this game compared to the previous two games.  Rare’s CGI capabilities are better than ever, as we clearly have the…

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Sonic Generations (Steam, 7 hours)

I went into Sonic Generations with low expectations.  After all, this is a post-”Werehog” Sonic game.  But I was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed Generations.  Basically, there’s old-school Sonic and new-school Sonic, and they cross paths because Sonic is traveling through space and time.  The game doesn’t waste a lot of time with plot, and it plays like a retrospective of the Sonic series…

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Super Kiwi 64 (Steam, 69 minutes)

This is a cute little game that is blatantly inspired by Banjo-Kazooie for the N64.  That said, it’s lacking in length, quality, plot, and challenge compared to Banjo.  Still, for $2.99, you could do worse.  I waited for a sale price and paid maybe a little more than a buck after taxes.  You go from world to world, collecting gizmos (I can’t be bothered to look up what the game calls them), and…

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Introducing tylerdodgeweb.dev

When I was younger (like, 13 years ago), I met a man making a pretty decent business creating WordPress websites for local businesses in Philadelphia. Well, it occurred to me that I’ve been working with the WordPress tool set for about eight years now running this blog, and maybe I could make a couple bucks doing the same thing as the man I met in Philly. So I’m happy to say, I’ve started…

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Sonic Mania (Steam)

One of my earliest gaming memories is playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with my friend from preschool.  From the moment I watched the Blue Blur race through the Aquatic Ruin Zone, without any sort of hiccup in the game’s performance, I knew I’d be a gamer for life.  Sonic Mania captures the thrill of playing Sonic for the first time, with levels that provide a modern take on the classic formula.  The…

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 

I never thought we’d receive a game just like Castlevania 1 and 3 again in the modern era.  But then along came Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. The game is surprisingly simple to play. Inti Creates took the time to recreate the look and feel of an NES Castlevania, but there you don’t need a lot of finesse to play the game. Walk right, bop a few enemies, whip the lamps, repeat. And yet, I must…

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Super Mario 3D Land (6.5 hours)

On the Retronauts Discord, which I am now no longer a part of, some folks hate on classic games. Specifically Super Mario 64. Their argument is that classic Mario games are really obstacle courses with a finish line, and SM64 does away with that in favor of massive maps and collectibles. Super Mario 3D Land was an attempt to bring the obstacle course design into three dimensions. I’d say they…

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The Book version 2

eBook for everybody :D

Seeing that we live in the future, I am releasing my book (yet again) this time as an eBook. It costs nothing. This is up-to-date as of March 2023. I am taking the approach of modern game developers and including incremental upgrades over time. Current version is 0.2. Did I mention it’s free? I should mention I got professional help from weformat on Fiverr.com for formatting the book. I do not…

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Deep Music Cuts - Vol. 1

Deep Music Cuts - Vol. 1

Headless Horseman – The Microphones  On an otherwise unremarkable album, The Microphones (which on this song is just Phil Elverum) make a great track, which is rooted in American folklore.  Well, Wikipedia claims the notion of a horseman without a head dates back to the Middle Ages, but most people associate the Headless Horseman with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a short story by Washington…

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