I’m a sucker for a solid create-a-character mode, to the point where it often distracts me from getting anything else done in a game. I could make wrestlers for hours without doing any actual wrestling, or spend a day assembling a football team full of wide receivers that are seven-foot-four, 400 pounds, and can outrun a Kenyan. And it isn’t just sports games that reel me in – games that rely solely on the user to create the protagonist don’t escape this curse, either. I couldn’t tell you the ma...

Don't talk to Frank Castle about anger issues. He's a walking one. But then, you would be too if you and your family witnessed a botched mob hit and the hitmen killed your entire family to prevent being ratted out.

Connoisseurs of minimalism, rejoice - your idol rests here. It is a 24x26 square with openings at each end, and two nameless, faceless, worthless icons squaring off (no pun intended) against each other in a race to the finish. The box is filled with lines representing walls which are spaced just so, allowing your geometric figure to wend its way through corridors as black as the infinite vacuum of space. What reward lies at the end of these bleak hallways? None. Does hope spring eternal for our ...

Entitling a game Amazing Island is not a matter to be taken lightly. Although most of us have a concrete notion of what an "island" is, definitions of "amazing" vary from person to person. What is amazing to you may be horribly mundane to me, and vice versa. Of course, you can't please everyone all the time, so it's inevitable that Amazing Island will disappoint many people by default by providing action that clearly does not pass the standards of amazement that many people have cemented ...

Are Japanese games of chance and peeks into the dressing rooms of changing women your two greatest passions? Then it just so happens that Pachinko Sexy Reaction is an arcade game that you should invest some time in. It's about as deep as a child's wading pool, and stays in that shallow territory for the entirety of the experience. If you like cheap little table games like pachinko and pinball, here you go. If you like buxom animé women who like to conveniently "forget" that they're not un...

Resolved: That Lupin the 3rd is an excellent manga/animé, and by the same token, his success should therefore translate well to video games.

For a lover of the classic Mega Man games endeavoring to find inexpensive copies on eBay, the search can be long and arduous. Carts are strewn all about the open market, to be sure, but one can never be too confident even with a picture of the Mega Man 6 cartridge sitting right next to an immaculate pairing of its respective box and instruction manual. The casual old-school gamer hoping to relive the Blue Bomber's glory days with a lucky, capricious bid is often overwhelmed by crazed bidders wil...

What is DoDonPachi? If you answered ''a shooter,'' you are wrong. Go home, go directly home, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Something moved. What was that noise? Is something coming? I don't feel too safe walking down this dank corridor ..... wait, how many missiles do I have? Do I have enough? I haven't found a missile supplement in a while ..... should I keep going? Will a Metroid pop out at me? Do I really have enough missiles? Is it worth it to run back to the ship and recharge, or should I just blast a few enemies and hope for a few refills? What if oh God a Metroid AHHHHHH.......

If 30-foot-tall extraterrestrials with poorly concealed intestinal tracts and fangs as sharp as Lee press-on nails ever decide to take over the Earth, I pray to God we have two souls as brave as Mad Dog and Scorpion (Blue Pants and Red Pants to the layperson) to take them on. Landing by helicopter in the middle of a smoldering city that's been destroyed by either aliens or a day of baking cookies gone horribly awry, Mad Dog and Scorpion require no briefing from the president, who may very well h...