East Meets West: The Legend of Makai

I told you I was done with Pong consoles, but a spectre has continued to haunt Nicole Express in our Epoch series– the spectre of Pong. Specifically, the Epoch System 10. This 1977 color Pong powerhouse led directly to the µPD777, which led to the Cassette Vision, which in turn led to the Super Cassette Vision. And unlike Epoch’s first console,...

The Epoch Cassette Vision was a moderate success. But in 1983, that all ended, when Nintendo and Sega released new consoles, which had more advanced hardware that allowed for better graphics and games stored on ROM. Epoch went from dominating the cartridge-based game market in Japan to a distant third practically overnight. But it’s not like they...

When I asked the question, “what made the NES so interesting”, my answer was to describe the memory mappers used by the console. But what’s interesting is that the very first cartridge to feature a memory mapper was not from Nintendo themselves; they were late to the game of expansion hardware on cartridges, since their plan to expand the console...

The internet NES fan scene has changed over time. The modern scene I think is a lot more open to Japan-exclusive titles, thanks to the wealth of fan translations, and has different preferences. One game that seems to have fallen through the cracks is Rare’s Wizards and Warriors. It was a hit in its day, but doesn’t seem to get the attention other...

Oops, that last Cassette Vision post was supposed to be a review of some games for it. This is a fairly historically important console, but not a huge seller; video games didn’t really boom in Japan until the Famicom. Not a flop by any means, but maybe keep that in mind. What’s the difference between the titles on the Famicom and the titles here?...