It might seem strange to talk about Space Harrier, Beamrider and Duck Hunt in the same piece, but all 3 are examples of arcade and console games that we're trying to offer 3D action experiences before the genre solidified in the 1990s. So enjoy this list of disparate 3D action games from the 80s!

Here's some great music for today from We Love Katamari! This is one of those songs I loved the moment I heard it in the game and immediately added to my personal playlist way back in 2005! It's "Everlasting Love" by Tohyama, lyrics by Alisa. #videogames #vgm #videogamemusic #gaming

Thumper has a successor coming up called Thrasher and I missed it being out on VR? Sign me up! Thumper is amazing on any platform! (I have it on my phone, PC and PSVR) I never thought combining horror, rhythm and rail riding could make such an amazing game. They proved me wrong!

Those are fighting words! Ken > Dan > Ryu in my book. Ryu is like asking for vanilla when you could have any other flavor.

Heated Barrel is a bit awkward to due to its shooting mechanics, but it's fun. Like Blood Bros. (same developer), it's a Western shooter with some unfortunate racist imagery of native peoples, but it does offer 4-player action. It's not as good as Sunset Riders, but definitely is a lot weirder!

Ah, battling Gato over and over... the tedious but easy way to level your characters and build your coffers early on in Chrono Trigger. It's made much easier with an emulator set at high speed!

I'm seeing a lot of AI pushers recently on social media. (Probably bots.) Listen, bots, I'm in a post-ChatGPT phase. I thought it was cool 2 years ago but now I'm absolutely over it. I find it sickening, if I'm being honest. It's bad for our minds and the planet. My son says to add #anticlanker

I'm a huge defender of this game! It's not sophisticated graphically, but it really feels like it was meant for younger girls as an entry into RPGs. Imagine if more games had been marketed towards girls instead of just teen boys in the 90s - it would have been a far more awesome time to be a gamer!

One theory I've come up with is that Microsoft is having the Xbox division push Game Pass on PC and mobile players because it runs on Azure for streaming. This allows them to do some double-dealing with corporate accounting and have TWO profitable divisions instead of just one.

Here's another Star Wars thread I did on my favorite Droid companions. You'll note that yes, I REALLY love the droids in the Old Republic era games. There are so many awesome characters from KOTOR, KOTOR 2 and The Old Republic, and you should play them all!

I'm seeing a lot of Star Wars posts today, so it seems like a good time to remind everyone I played through just about every game in the series a few years back and found some lesser-known Star Wars games you should check out! (Yes, I do mean all of them, if I could - even the Jakks Pacific ones!)

This was one of Blizzard's earliest games (when they were still called Silicon & Synapse), and also one of their best of that era!

Keep in mind that Microsoft is "investing" in Game Pass while laying off employees and cancelling projects and raising the prices of its consoles. Why? How? Huh? I really don't follow the logic either. Game Pass is a great deal for gamers, but it's a bad one for many publishers.

I'm amazed anyone wants more of this duo after seasons 2 and 3 forgot the Lone Wolf and Cub premise and introduced a bunch of silly nonsense instead. Or after Andor showed us Star Wars could be better than all that. I love Star Wars, but I'm weary of a lot of the Disney take on it.

Since I'm seeing a lot of Spider-Man in my feed today, here's a thread I put up many months ago about some of the best classic superhero games! I should update this sometime with the best between 2000-2025. (It's a far longer list!)

If you're looking at this game and thinking, "That looks... different," you couldn't be more right. Mr. Bones is one of my favorite Saturn exclusives, created by Ed Annunziata, the same guy who made Ecco the Dolphin. It's unlike anything else I've ever played, and quite funny besides!

This game, called Sportsday, looks like tremendous fun! I could see playing this one with my family or during a gathering with more casual gamers.

PSA - scammers are always trying something new! Remind your relatives and less tech-savvy friends, "Windows + R probably means someone's running a scam on you."

My reading of the Silent Hill f reviews is "This is a good survival horror game that does what Silent Hill did best in tone and gameplay but feels different due to the setting." Also, it sounds like the first half is a slog and the combat's no good. So, it's still on brand for a Silent Hill game!

All right! Here's your semi-regular reminder to try the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, an absolutely insane shoot 'em up with crazy horse whinnies and exploding trees and careening tanks and a vocal track with awesomely inscrutable lyrics! #videogames #gaming #retrogames

Here's a fun piece from the LittleBigPlanet OST based on "Zorba's Dance" from the dance scene in the film "Zorba the Greek". This is a great one since it goes both slow and fast in time with the action. It's "Skipping Syrtaki" by Kenneth CM Young! #videogames #vgm #videogamemusic #gaming

OK, back to grading papers after spending an hour writing tedious posts about video game pricing! (You can guess which of the two activities I find more fun!)

I'm weary of the $60-80 game argument. It's all based around one fallacy: That most games cost $60-80. Most games released digitally do NOT cost $60-80. They often cost $40 or less! Market price =/= MSRP. So let's have an honest discussion about pricing in games. (A thread; all prices USD)

This beat em up is terrific, and it's only $2 right now! If you don't have a copy, you really should!

I stumbled upon a really strange arcade game today from 1983 called Uncle Poo. The premise is that you're an old man collecting treasure and shooting projectiles at your enemies from your behind. As dumb as that sounds, it's actually a fun one! #retrogames #videogames #gaming

Today on The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played, we take a look at Dynamite Duke, an on-rails shooting gallery style action game from Seibu Kaihatsu that's way better in its arcade incarnations than on the Genesis/Mega Drive. There's also a two player version called The Double Dynamites!

Here's some good music for a Sunday! (Persona 4 music is good any day, of course!) It's "Pursuing My True Self" by Shoji Meguro, vocals by Shihoko Hirata, lyrics by Yu Namba and RyoRca #videogames #vgm #videogamemusic #gaming

Ah, the incredibly violent adventures of Halloween Harry and his flamethrower. What a classic! Alien Carnage was a game that DOS players could enjoy knowing console and Amiga gamers were missing out. This is the boxed edition, but it was best known for being a shareware game.

I think this was one of the first games I ever played where the cover art was almost exactly a match for the gameplay. Wing Commander was truly as exciting as the box made it look!

It's never a bad idea to dive into The Misadventures of Tron Bonne! It's a fun one with some really wonderful characters and gameplay!

Here's why I enjoy being on Bsky - getting to learn about obscure CD-i games like these from people who actually bought them.

A Pac-Man Labyrinth? This is so cool!

Found this at Books A Million - where was stuff like this when I was a kid?

My son asked me to post up a #Caturday picture, so here's one I snapped this morning of two of ours! (One of them was trying to hit the mouse cursor on my TV while I was playing an adventure game the other night!)

Free game alert! Get it while you can!

Ordyne is a tough but fun horizontally scrolling shooter that's firmly in the Cute 'em Up camp. It's one of Namco's prettiest games from the late 1980s and it's quite fun when Pac Man makes a cameo! #videogames #gaming #retrogames

It's Saturday, so time for some fun! Here's one of the many great tracks from The World Ends With You - "Hybrid" by Takeharu Ishimoto, lyrics and vocals by SAWA #videogames #vgm #videogamemusic #gaming

I absolutely loathe the term "Celestoidvania", but I had to admit LUCID looks pretty cool!

I've always loved how Chop Chop Master Onion teaches martial arts so well that PaRappa can defeat him later in the game when it's time to plow through the long line for the toilet. The student becomes the master after just this single lesson! (CCMO loses his dojo eventually. No one knows why!)

Signal boosting! Lady Dracula looks neat indeed! I'm here for these 8-bit Castlevania-style games. There's a lot of meat left on those bones.

Microsoft will look very bad to investors if it shuts down Xbox after buying up all those development studios to try to restart its Xbox division, so the greater likelihood is Xbox will be spun off or sold. Microsoft will hold on to the publishing division and IPs it acquired. Those are valuable!

I'm going to guess we'll see Sony continue the PlayStation line for at least a couple more console generations (though the next PlayStation is likely to follow the Switch/Steam Deck's hybrid nature) They have a good thing going and they're still very savvy about maintaining developer relationships

My prediction is that Microsoft is going to try to pivot Xbox to a licensed software platform for computer makers to create devices for and then get out of console manufacturing altogether. We may even get to the point where it's just PC and cloud-based without an Xbox console spec.

When I worked in games retail about 20 years ago, price drops were a really big deal. Corporate would ship us kits to be ready to replace all the signage with the new prices so we could take advantage of the excitement I'm certain retail employees are absolutely baffled by the Xbox price increases

I've been thinking a bit about why Microsoft would RAISE the price of an aging console when any business school student knows: As prices go up, demand goes down. So, why would Microsoft want Xbox demand to go DOWN in time for the holiday season? Here are 10 possible reasons (A thread)

A few months ago, I posted this list of some animal mascot games from the 16-bit era that were actually good following Sonic's success. I left out some of the ones you might be familiar with in favor of some of those that are under the radar! Check it out!

Ugh. I hope a mob of angry fanboys smash this thing into smithereens. I'd rather they hired a Stan Lee impersonator to wander the floor than have this sort of digital necromancy in place.

Good tunes! I'm cautiously excited for this game. It's different from the Lumines I know and love, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Plus, they said there'll be a VR mode!

Yes, Dropsy looks like a completely weird game you wouldn't want to play. Yes, it's only 99 cents right now. Yes, it's really a great game well worth that asking price! It's not cynical. It's not violent. It's not conventional in any way. But it is a one of a kind game you'll never forget!

I don't think we've ever had a console generation where prices for all the major platforms have gone up instead of down. But raising them TWICE in the same year? That's wild!