We know what you’re thinking. With all the retro systems out there, why are we talking about the GameCube? What do GameCube party games have that you can’t get from other systems? Actually, a lot of the best party games ever made are found exclusively on the GameCube, like Super Smash Bros Melee. And yes, we know that most of the franchises on this list have moved on to newer, “better” systems. Ok, fine. So tell us, where else you can find another Mario Kart: Double Dash title besides the GameCube? The answer: nowhere. Double Dash is a super-unique Mario Kart game that was only released on GameCube. And this is just one of many GameCube exclusives we’re going to review for you today. Get your multiplayer retro gaming party on with these hit GameCube titles. Oh, and don’t forget: GameCube games are playable on Wii consoles, too. 1. Mario Kart:...

The late 1990s and early 2000s produced some of the most beloved retro games in history. Most often, we thank the N64, the original PlayStation, and the original Xbox for that. Soon after this era, gamers upgraded to newer PlayStations and Xboxes. And let’s not forget Nintendo’s revolutionary Wii, the first console designed primarily for motion-sensing games. But we are forgetting something, aren’t we? What about the Nintendo GameCube? Why do gamers so often overlook the GameCube when reminiscing through retro gaming history? It certainly isn’t for lack of playability. The GameCube has an excellent library of games from our favorite game franchises. Some of these titles are considered the best in their respective series, like Mario Kart: Double Dash! That’s why, today, we’re going to show our love for Nintendo’s most overlooked console. Read on to learn 7 compelling reasons why every retro gamer should own a GameCube. 1. Excellent...

Putting together a list of “the best PS2 RPGs” is both easy and difficult. It’s easy in the sense that there’s no dearth of role-playing games—the system has more RPG titles than some short-lived consoles, like the TurboGrafx-16, has of any kind at all. The difficult part involves separating the wheat from the chaff. The good news is that it can be done, and the below entries make up our 15 RPGs for PS2 (ranked from 15 to 1).  These amazing titles are sure to please any role playing enthusiast. Some of these options, dare we say, rise to the level of modern classics.  You can also buy many of these PlayStation 2 games for sale on our website. 15. Kingdom Hearts II The first “Kingdom Hearts” entry initially confused many gamers and reviewers by throwing Disney Characters into a “Final Fantasy” world. Kingdom Hearts II sticks with the same basic premise of...

Video game bosses. They’re the one thing that makes or breaks action games. You could have a good run through corridors, dungeons and caves, slaughtering wave after wave of enemies. But if a boss shows up at the end and the ensuing battle is underwhelming, you’ll come away with a bad taste in your mouth. This is especially true for superhero games, given that they often feature colorful and fascinating villains. The Marvel universe, in particular, is host to a litany of memorable bad guys. So, when they show up in a Marvel video game, we expect them to live up to their infamy. Without further ado, here are the most badass video game bosses in Marvel video games. 1. Carnage (Spider-Man Venom Maximum Carnage, 1994, SNES & Sega Genesis) Whether you’re a superhero or not, you absolutely do not want to run into Carnage in a dark alley. Even on...

Retro games are worth more than movies and sports combined. Their revenue in the US sits at over $179.7 billion, compared to $100 billion for film and $75 billion for sports. 

The industry grows quickly with new games released every year, but that's not the only reason it remains dominant. Retro gaming on decades-old retro consoles like the Nintendo NES and GameCube is still a popular pastime.

It’s right there in the word itself. But of course they’re more than that, too. There’s the interactivity, of course, and the sound design can really improve or drag down a game…and then there’s reading. Reading?  If we want to pull out the old stereotype, then people play video games instead of reading (which is why video games “are destroying our youth”). But then, that stereotype would also have all gamers as teens or twenty-something dudes living in their parents’ basements and wasting their lives in inept solitude, so we should approach such generalizations with skepticism. In fact, there’s quite a bit of reading that goes on around video games. From the pre-release coverage and hype to reviews, manuals, and fan communities built around strategies, secrets, and simple discussion, avid gamers often do quite a bit of reading to enhance their knowledge about and enjoyment of our favorite games. Much of this...

I’m not the kind of player who longs for “the good old days” when games seemed to hate you and want you to die. My attempt to replay Paperboy and recapture the glory of my NES days was short-lived as I realized how needlessly, unrewarding cruel that game is—I just didn’t know any better as a kid.  But I’m also not the kind of player who wants games to be easy. My first walkthroughs are more often set to Hard than to Normal. My biggest disappointment about the death of my first PS3 Console was that I lost the save data for my finished Hard play through of The Last of Us and so wouldn’t be able to play Survivor mode next. The difference is in what makes the game difficult Difficulty, like everything else in a game, can be designed well or poorly. To see what good difficulty plays like,...

As entertainment consumers, most of us love remastered old releases. Whether it’s music or film, giving the classics an update is more often than not a net positive. And the trend of remastering old video game titles has also grown to be a mostly positive thing, as we discussed in a previous post. That article ended with a call-to-action that encouraged readers to think of video game updates that have all but ruined the originals. But besides the titles themselves, there are factors to consider when weighing the negatives and positives of video game remasters. Remasters from the development perspective Another one of our posts politely elucidated the myriad ways in which publishers are screwing gamers for money. It’s a real problem and these companies should be taken to task for their anti-consumer practices. But where it concerns remastered video games, it might be valuable to look at the trend from...

I’m a pretty big Final Fantasy fan. I came into the series with VII and have played everything since besides the MMOs and the two sequels to the lackluster XIII. I’ve had conversations with friends about what the Final Fantasy musical RPG that never was would have looked like (I would totally play that—good or bad, it would be hilarious). Here at The Old School Game Vault, I’ve gone back and played and reviewed Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI. And last year, I finally picked up the PSP update of the cult classic tactical RPG Final Fantasy: War of the Lions. And then, thirty hours in I walked away to play another —and so far much better—PSP remake of a classic TRPG, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Here’s why I won’t be firing up my PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics ever again. In 2007, ten years after its...

Whether it's the influence of the recent Avengers series of Marvel movies or just that video game storytelling is continuing to develop, post-credits scenes seem to be getting more and more common in games these days. The tradition of hiding some sort of Easter egg after the credits has been around in movies at least since the post-credits tagline “James Bond will return . . . “ was first used in 1963’s From Russia With Love (though post-credit scenes weren’t popularized until 1979’s The Muppet Movie).  The younger medium of video games didn’t pick up on this tradition until the 90s, however (with the exception, apparently, of the Japanese version of Contra), when classics like Earthbound and the Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy franchises began using the technique. Since then, video game post-credit scenes have become increasingly common as the industry has grown and developed. In video games, as in...

A couple of years back, while visiting with family over Thanksgiving, my cousins and siblings and I started playing the card game we call King Peasant (though it’s also called a lot of other things around the world).              The premise is that the game models a political structure (it’s sometimes called President) where the people on top stay on top and the people on bottom stay on bottom because at the beginning of each round, the lowest people have to give their top 1-3 cards (depending on how low in the hierarchy they are) to the top people, ensuring that the top people have better hands. At this Thanksgiving I’d been on the bottom for nearly the whole game, so I decided to see if I could model another aspect of politics and start a revolution. I successfully got all the bottom people plus the middle, neutral, person to join my revolution...

One of the most pleasant surprises of the end of the PS2’s life cycle were Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, which was an add for Persona 3 (2007) and Shin Megami Tensei Persona 4 (2008), all released in North America long after the next generation of consoles had come out. The Battle System in these RPGs is party-based combat In standard level-grinding dungeons, but the other half of the gameplay makes Persona games unique. Each game is split almost evenly in half between dungeon combat. . . And working through one year in the daily life of high school students in Japan (including occasionally answering questions in school). The player directs the protagonist To determine how to spend free time, by spending time with friends, potential girlfriends (all playable relationships are heterosexual and only Persona 3 Portable the PSP version offers a female protagonist), or local residents, eating or...

Spoiler note: This post contains plot spoilers about Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and, by default, spoilers about the characters in the upcoming Pre-Sequel who also appear in Borderlands 2. Spoiling Borderlands 1 for you might actually be doing you a favor, though. That ending’s terrible. With Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel right around the corner, I recently explained why the first two games are so hard to put down. You might notice that that post doesn’t talk about story at all. You don’t play Borderlands for the story. But—and this is coming from a gamer deeply interested in video game storytelling—that’s okay. Some games are fun enough that they can do just fine with no narrative interest whatsoever. Borderlands is one of those series. That being said, the ending of the first Borderlands was one of the bigger narrative train wrecks in recent gaming memory.  But to their credit, Gearbox admitted it, learned from it, and made the story and characters of Borderlands 2...

Before we begin, let’s get something out of the way. There’s literally no one on the planet who hasn’t dreamed of waking up one day, receiving a holographic phone call from a hot secretary who tells you “The world needs you. Now!” as you smirk out of bed, put on your suit, head over to the bay and strap yourself into a 40-foot machine built for absolute destruction. I mean, words and diplomacy can solve a lot of problems, without a doubt. But sometimes, you need to pilot a badass mech and just… Blow. Enemies. Away. Mech games are a lot of fun. When they’re done well, it’s almost too much fun. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the best mech games of all time. Note that these aren’t in any particular order, they’re all awesome games. Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. Full Boost – PS3/Arcade Extreme Vs. Full...

In a previous post we touched upon the notion of video game sequels and which franchises, despite stumbling at times, have done an overall good job at improving on their previous titles. The big boys were covered, including “Final Fantasy” and “Call of Duty.” Titles like these are solid examples of why gamers come back to the same franchises over and over This is because the best sequels straddle that thin line between maintaining what gamers love about the original, but delivering a new experience. In this article, we’ll expand on that notion and break down some other titles and how they succeeded in being new while remaining the same. Assassin’s Creed II What other much-hyped game in recent memory failed to live up to its potential like Assassin’s Creed? It was one of those mostly forgettable games that featured neither a compelling story, exciting gameplay, or standout design. Overall, it...

Buying a new gaming device is always exciting; until you get it home and find out that you don’t have everything you need to actually play it. So before you purchase that new PlayStation Vita, know your facts and avoid any unpleasant surprises.   The PS Vita is available as both a 3G/Wi-Fi model, and a Wi-Fi only model. The 3G/Wi-Fi model is currently priced at $299.99. 3G services are offered exclusively through AT&T with contract free, 30 day service plans. Currently, AT&T is offering a 250 MB plan for $14.99, 3 GB plan for $30.00, and a 5 GB plan for $50.00. Unfortunately, 3G downloads are restricted to 20 MB. So you’ll have to download most of your games via Wi-Fi. The cheaper Wi-Fi model is available for $249.99, and includes all the same features as the 3G model except for GPS. But even without built in GPS support, the Wi-Fi model still offers...

With the PlayStation 5 released in 2020, does it make sense to buy a PlayStation 4 in 2022? The simple answer is yes. You must be shaking your head in disbelief, but here are some incredibly good reasons why the PS4 still makes sense in 2022 and beyond Everyone's heard of scalpers ruining the computer market over the past year. Prices for processors and graphics cards have skyrocketed because of shortages in supply. This has extended to the PlayStation 5 as well. Sony has not been able to meet demand for the console at all over the past year. The PS5 was a hot ticket item during the holiday season last year, with stores often selling out within minutes of putting up stock. The situation has not improved at all this year. Big retailers like Walmart and Best Buy sell out online within minutes. As for in-person, you would have to...

Many people can find many classic DS games for sale on eBay. The DS Library is still in high demand. The following are some of the most common Nintendo DS games available for sale. More Common Titles you see Mario Kart, Zelda Spirit Tracks, Mario & Donkey Kong, Pokemon Platinum, Chrono Trigger are a few titles with availability online. The Pokémon series is one of the most Popular With 19 titles released for the Nintendo DS. You can get many of these titles for sale used with free shipping. Are games still for sale on a DS? Unfortunately, Nintendo will stop selling 3DS e-Shops by 2022. After completing this process, it's impossible to buy a 3DS game on eBay. You only have a chance to legally acquire a copy of a game from an authorized dealer. Which is better, Nintendo DS or DS Lite? Nintendo DS Lite has a smaller, slimmer body...

 A handful of hours into Final Fantasy XII your party emerges from the linear opening of the game and is able to explore and level up in the game’s first open world environment: the Dalmasca Estersand. Your characters are still pretty weak at this point So one of the more surprising things you see in the Estersand is a full-size T-Rex stomping around doing its thing. If you leave it alone, it leaves you alone. If you bother it, this happens. This is your heads up that the enemies in Final Fantasy IX’s open world don’t wait for you to get good to be crazy strong. Instead, the strong ones either leave you alone (like the T-Rex) or destroy you, which is your hint that you can’t go that way until you get stronger. It’s a brilliant game mechanic That makes open-world RPG combat more realistic and more fun at the same...

Final Fantasy IX Over the past couple of months, I sunk more hours than I want to admit into a playthrough of Elden Ring. Which probably came out to an average of 2-3 hours a day. I’m a married man with graduate degrees and a lot of things to do, but for the last couple of months, most of my free time went into exploring the vast open world of the lands between.  Whenever I finish a game binge of this sort, I feel a little like when I’ve eaten too much junk food (or drank too much). Why? I ask myself. Why did I do this? That’s a lot of time! Think of all the other things I could have been doing! At root, these questions come down to two basic worries: First, how much is too much? And second, are video games in general just a waste of time? We’ll...