Author: Taro Omiya
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Strange Free Games: Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa
Ever wondered what a JRPG would be like if a bunch of basketball fans made it? Look no further than Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa (shortened to Barkley from here on out). This game has everything you love from JRPGs, including our brooding hero, Charles Barkley; the…
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Weekly Game Music: Big (PaRappa The Rapper 2)
“You wanna be big?” That’s how this rap song — composed by Masaya Matsuura and titled Big — starts. It’s silly line from an equally silly game, PaRappa the Rapper 2. In this song, a pint-sized Guru Ant (Dean Bowman) tries to teach PaRappa (Dred Foxx) to be confident and strong through a simple repeat-after-me…
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Strange Free Games: This is the Only Level
If we’re talking about strange games, we’ve got to go into the flash game category. This is the Only Level – Adventures in Singularity is a game where, exactly as the title implies, there’s only one level. Despite its seeming simplicity, the game makes fun of you as you’re forced to think out of the…
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Weekly Game Music: Jack-in-the-Box! (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg)
Here’s a happy circus music from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: Jack-in-the-Box!, composed by Mariko Nanba and Tomoya Ohtani. It’s a relatively simple composition that experiments with many circus-related sound effects. It also doesn’t sound creepy, even when it’s dark. The plot behind Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg is simple: Morning Land, the…
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Strange Free Games: ROM CHECK FAIL
Well, we’ve had enough games with sophisticated stories. Let’s talk about a game with minimal story: ROM CHECK FAIL is a game that mashes together well-known game icons, then puts them into a blender. Well, not literally, but when you see the gameplay video below, you’ll get the idea. Download is available near the bottom…
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Weekly Game Music: Lights (Lumines)
As far as I know, we only have one J-Pop music in this series (and the first one is more J-Jazz than -Pop), so lets bump that one more. Here’s Lights, sung by Eri Nobichika. The song appears in the excellent Tetris-based puzzle game, Lumines. Like Tetris, Lumines involves placing 2 x 2 blocks of…