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Arcade

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Back in the day, there used to be two baseball games that would compete with each other; Sony’s MLB The Show and MLB 2K. Following the release of MLB 2K13, 2K Sports dropped the franchise, leaving PlayStation exclusive The Show to dominate the virtual baseball market. In 2014, RBI Baseball brought back their franchise, aiming to create a more arcade-based style instead of the realistic simulation that The Show offers. I think that is an unwise decision and that the RBI Baseball franchise won’t exist much longer in the future. The thing about baseball video games is that no one buys them except for hardcore baseball fans. Except for Mario Baseball or epic arcade-style games like The Bigs or Slugfest, baseball fans want a realistic sim. The casual baseball fan isn’t going to buy a copy of RBI Baseball like a casual fan would buy Madden or NBA 2K. If…

Death is a natural part of life. Life giveth, life taketh, and life messeth with you a little bit along the way. It’s always sad when a game series forever concludes, but all good things must come to an end. But what about those series that never received a definitive end where the protagonist walks into the sunset as the main theme starts to play? I mean, that’s how my life is going to end (I have rehearsed it repeatedly), but there are many series of games that received no such luck. Today, let’s take a look at what games should’ve gotten another in their series, or should make a return, or simply added truth to the saying that the good always die young. Or, worse yet, are frozen in suspended animation until their publisher decides to use them ever again — truly, an even more twisted fate. 5. F-Zero…

I have one goal in my lifetime, and that is to own a Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine (with Galaga of course) at some point. With today’s technology, arcade games can appear to be obsolete. We have televisions and consoles that produce lifelike graphics, and video games are going places they have never been before, especially once VR becomes commonplace. But we shouldn’t forget arcade games of the past, the roots of modern-day gaming as we know it. Walking into an arcade is a lost art. Today, kids can pull up a game on their phone and play anywhere at any time they want, usually during school or times when their focus should be elsewhere. I was never an arcade child myself, but I have heard the war stories that have been passed down to me. People would flock to the arcades after school with quarters they saved up, taking turns…

Throughout the history of gaming, there have been a select few technological turning points that changed the direction of video games forever. You could say they include: the introduction of arcades, the arrival of home consoles (and subsequently, the death of arcades), and the leap from 2D to 3D graphics. These advances changed the landscape of games and decided the next playing field that they would exist on. After 3D graphics, though, what is leap is left? Have they all been leapt over, or is there yet another one that will change the direction of gaming like its predecessors before? Well, to better understand the scope of things thus far, we can divide advances in gaming technology into two categories: revolutionary and refining. “Revolutionary” includes the aforementioned leaps that we just talked about; the ones that introduce a whole new level of play. “Refining” refers to the steps taken along…

Activision Blizzard is just outright being weird. It started many years ago when Activision bought Blizzard. At that point everyone declared Blizzard dead and that profits will rule the kingdom. That wasn’t… true you could say? Blizzard, under Mike Morhaime one of the co-founders of Blizzard, continued to prosper and be the one game launcher (Blizzard App, previously Battle.net) that no one complained about, Then 2018 hit and like many things, Activision Blizzard got weird. Mike Morhaime left the company, the CFO was poached twice and they basically began mothballing their very popular game Heroes of the Storm. All the while they spent most of the year being besieged by positive press about their profits. Then, there was BlizzCon where they announced the Diablo: Immortal game to basically people pausing and going what. Why did this happen? There is a lot to it, with many moving parts. If I had…